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THE INTERPRETATION 
OF HISTORY 



THE INTERPRETATION 
OF HISTORY 

By 

MAX NORDAU 

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY 

M. A. HAMILTON 




NEW YORK 

MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 

1911 



f 









Copyright, J910, by 

MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 

New York 



All Rights Reserved 



THE QUINN £ BODEN CO. PRESS 
RAHWAY, N, J. 



(f ni A278912 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. History and the Writing of History . . i 

n. The Customary Philosophy of History . 47 

HI. The Anthropomorphic View of History . 88 

IV. Man and Nature 133 

V. Society and the Individual . . . .159 

VI. The Psychological Roots of Religion . 206 

VII. The Psychological Premises of History, . 251 

VIII. The Question of Progress . . . .316 

IX. Eschatology 362 

X. The Meaning of History — Conclusion . 391 



THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 
CHAPTER I 

HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

The confusion almost everywhere prevalent between 
history and the writing of history will be firmly avoided 
in the course of the subsequent inquiry. The philosophy 
of history, even in the hands of its most distinguished 
exponents, has tended far too much to identify the object 
of description and the description itself. There is some- 
thing almost ludicrous in the unconscious arrogance of 
this. The lordly declaration of the historian, " History 
is that portion of the world's story which is established 
by tradition and recorded in written history," ^ is 
prompted by the confident self-importance of the bureau- 
crat, who cries, " quod non est in actis, non est in 
mundo ! " 

The ancients were wiser when they admitted that there 
had been heroes before Agamemnon, although — 

" illacrimabiles 
Urgentur ignotique longa 
Nocte, carent quia vate sacro " — 

* Ferdinand Erhardt, "The Sphere of History: Problems of His- 
torical Research," Berne, 1906, p. 4. Even so clear a thinker as P. 
Lacombe ("De I'Histoire consideree comme Science," Paris, 1894) 
gives this narrow definition: "History is all that lue know of the 
doings of our ancestors" (italics are mine). 



2 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

eternal night holds them, unwept and unhonoured, be- 
cause unsung by the bard; or, as Sadi in Gulistan de- 
clares : 

" Many a hero now forgotten sleepeth quiet underground, 
And upon the earth no echoes of his glory ever sound." 

Friedrich Schiller had none of the arrogance of his 
followers, or of their desire for self-glorification. He 
did not hold that nothing is history but what is repre- 
sented by the historian. On the contrary, in his " What 
is Universal History, and why should it be studied? " he 
says: "The historian selects from this mass of occur- 
rences those which have had a direct influence, and one 
which can readily be traced, upon the present aspect of 
the world and the condition of the generations living at 
this day." This limitation, borrowed by Schiller from 
Kant,^ appears at first sight to be illuminating, but 
closer examination hardly justifies it. 

Schiller himself recognizes that a " long series of 
causally Interconnected events can be traced from the 
present moment to the origin of the human species." 
How, then, can anyone presume to make an arbitrary 
selection among these countless causes of which effects 
continue to be operative in the most recent development? 
Why should those occurrences only be selected which 

' Emmanuel Kant, collected works, edited by G. Hartenstein, 
Leipzig, 1867, vol. iv., " Idea of a Universal History from the 
International Point of View," p. 157: "They (our . descendants) 
will doubtless only value the history of ancient times, whose records 
must have long since disappeared, in the light of what really in- 
terests them — namely, the good or harm done by nations and gov- 
ernments from the international point of view." 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 3 

" have exercised an influence which can readily be 
traced" upon the present aspect of the world and the 
condition of the generations alive to-day? Is an influ- 
ence less direct and important when it can be traced, 
not with ease, but with great difficulty? A superficial 
view of any human event will suggest visible causes 
which are hardly ever the real ones/ The forces which 
determine events are often deeply hidden: the most 
penetrating insight and laborious investigation is neces- 
sary before they and their interrelation can be discov- 
ered. Knowledge which stops short at " the occurrences 
which have exercised an influence which can readily be 
traced upon the present aspect of the world " may ac- 

' To avoid breaking the thread of my argument, I will give 
some concrete examples in this note. Popular accounts of the 
movement for North American independence place its beginning on 
December 16, 1773, with the attack on the tea-ships in Boston harbour, 
and describe it as being caused by the English stamp and Custom 
dues. Edouard Laboulaye ("Histoire Politique des fitats Unis," 
Paris, 1855) occupies nearly 200 pages (vol. ii., pp. i-i86) in showing 
that the beginnings of the secession of the United States coincide 
with the beginning of the English settlement itself. George Ban- 
croft ("History of the United States," Boston, 1852) takes the 
same view. Vols, iv.-vi. deal with " The American Revolution," 
the beginning of which he puts as far back as 1748. Bancroft does 
not reach the attack on the tea-ships till p. 487 of vol. vi. The 
latest historian of the North American Revolution, Mary A. M. 
Marks ("England and America, 1763-1783: the History of a Re- 
action"), dates its beginning as 1763, finds its causes in the strife 
of parties in England, and concludes: "The history of the loss of 
America is the history of a Tory reaction." 

Wolfgang Menzel (" The Last 120 Years of Universal History," 
Stuttgart, i860, vol. ii., p. i) begins his account of the French 
Revolution thus: "The greatest event of modern times, the French 
Revolution, began on the day on which . . . the long-desired meet- 
ing of the States-General was opened by Louis XVL" On the 
other hand, Louis Blanc writes in his "Histoire de la Revolution 



4 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

count for such a view of history as Scribe expresses in 
his " Verre d'Eau," or Pascal/ when he declares that the 
history of the world would have been different had Cleo- 
patra's nose been of a different shape. No doubt our 
sympathy is principally, if not exclusively, aroused by 
something whose relation to " the present aspect of the 
world and the condition of the generation living at this 
day " can be easily seen. But how nebulous is the con- 
ception of history which this criterion affords us ! Ac- 
cording to it, what was history for the past generation is 
no longer so for us, and what is history for us will be so 
no longer for the generation succeeding. What was 
history to the Indians and Japanese has never existed for 

Frangaise," Paris, 1847, vol. i., Preamble: "History begins and 
ends nowhere. The facts which compose a world process are so 
confused and so obscurely connected that there is no event of which 
the first cause or final result can be stated with certainty. . . . 
How, then, can the real starting-point of the French Revolution be 
established?" He begins, therefore, with John Hus, and does 
not reach until p. 258, vol. ii., the summoning of the States-General, 
which Menzel regarded as the beginning of the Revolution. 

Maxime du Camp ("Souvenirs de I'Armee," Paris, 1848, pp. 65 
et seg.) ascribes the origin of the February revolution to the fact 
that Sergeant Giacomoni, of the 14th Line Infantry Regiment, took 
upon himself to have a man shot, apparently a painter's model, who 
had tried to hit the captain of his battalion in the face with a 
torch. 

It is regarded as an irrefutable fact by many French publicists that 
the war of 1870 was caused by the "forgery" introduced by Bis- 
marck into King William's despatch regarding his interview with 
Count Benedetti. 

The sinking of the Maine in the harbour of Havana is cited as 
the cause of the Spanish-American War, etc. 

* Blaise Pascal, " Lettres Provinciales et Pensees," new edition, 
Paris, 1821, vol. ii., p. 155: "If Cleopatra's nose had been shorter, 
the whole face of the earth would have been different." 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 5 

Europeans and Americans, and vice versa. History, 
then, changes with place and time. The chapters that 
are greeted with universal excitement to-day will be as 
Stale to-morrow as the novel which is read one day by 
all the world, only to be cast into the waste-paper basket 
on the next. It wanders through the darkness of the 
past like a man with a lantern. There is a dim circle of K, 
light around it, moving as it moves from place to place. 
As it passes on, darkness falls upon the spot that was 
brightly lit up yesterday, and what it now illumines will 
to-morrow again be plunged in gloom. 

Since the caprice, or call it personality, of the historian 
will decide the manner in which he treats, limits, and 
selects his material, and this according to the definition 
laid down by historians in a body, is history itself, we 
logically arrive at the droll conclusion that the writer 
of history creates it ! The historian, and not heroes or 
peoples, creates it ! What a great man is this historian ! 
Those who toil at the loom of time sink into insig- 
nificance in comparison with the man who stands behind, 
looking on more or less attentively, and recording their 
labours more or less correctly. History ceases to be a 
series of objective events in regular progression, whether 
that progression be intelligible and capable of a clear and 
comprehensible description or not, and becomes depend- 
ent on the cast of a mind of a particular human being 
who selects from the mass of recorded material what 
suits his interests, gratifies his feelings, and falls in with 
his peculiar aspirations; its arrangement depends on his 
understanding, and its form on his artistic ability. In 
one word, history has no longer an objective, but merely 
a subjective existence; and yet Ranke speaks of wishing 



6 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

" to extinguish his Self," in order to display the naked 
reality of things. Well might Georg Simmel ^ remark : 
" The gratification of Ranke's wish to extinguish his Self 
in order to see facts in themselves would destroy the 
success which he imagined that he would gain by it. 
Self once extinguished, there would be nothing left to 
observe the Not-Self." I would add, that nothing 
would be left to feel the sympathy with human beings 
and their deeds which is the impulse to any description 
of historical events. The personality of the historian 
governs all historical narration, Ranke's included — 
speaks in and through it in the effort to impress itself 
upon the reader. Let us quote once more the settled 
verdict of antiquity. The ancients felt, no doubt, that 
the writing of history was an art, not a science, aiming 
not at truth, but beauty, and assigned to it therefore an 
aesthetic value only.^ 

In its early Herodotean origins, history was a form of 
story-telling, distinguished from Epos only, if at all, by 

^ Georg Simmel, "Problems of ' the Philosophy of History: a 
Scientific Study," Leipzig, 1892, p. i8. 

''Aristotle, "Poetics," chap. ix. : "Poetry is more philosophical 
and useful than history." Theodor Mommsen ("Roman History," 
Berlin, 1885, P- 5) admits that "fancy is the mother of history, 
as of all poetry," and thereby recognizes the blood relationship 
of the two — a remarkable admission on the part of an investigator 
who was at such pains to present history to the world in the light 
of a scientific activity. The admission has, however, become a 
commonplace with historians, who constantly repeat it, as, to 
take the most recent example, A. F. Pollard ("Factors in Modern 
History," London, 1907, p. i): "I make no apology for placing 
imagination in the forefront of all the qualifications indispensable 
for the student and teacher of history. . . . Probably it includes 
fact as well as fiction, and signifies the power of realizing things 
unseen." 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 7 

Its prose form; ^ and to-day, despite all its claims to rank 
among the sciences, despite its wordy, painful efforts to 
pass as a child of truth, its real affinities are with the 
novel. The only difference between the historian and 
the novelist Is that the Invention of the former is limited 
in regard to the facts of which a recognized version Is 
current. He cannot arbitrarily contradict what Is ac- 
cepted by the majority as established: but the play of his 
imagination Is uncontrolled In all save the few directions 
that are enclosed by indisputable records. There is no 
exaggeration In saying that history as it is written is a 
kind of roman a these novel,^ generally consciously, more 
rarely unconsciously. To speak of a science of history 
is to play with a term whose meaning cannot be arbitra- 
rily altered. Science, In the most limited and only cor- 
rect meaning of the word, is simply the knowledge of the 
causal connection of phenomena, and of the universal 
natural laws which they express. It is true that the 
word is used in a wider sense to cover the descriptive 
sciences, which confine themselves. In the lack of any 
mental nexus between concrete facts, to observing them 

^ E. Vacherot, "La Science et la Conscience," Paris, 1870, p. 94: 
" In the hands of the ancient authors history is amusing and moral, 
rather than historical." P. 96: " Livy's fabulous tales of the 
origin of Rome only need the genius, language, and songs of an- 
cient Greece to make them a real poem, like the 'Iliad.'" P. 100: 
" Quintus Curtius has tried to make the history of Alexander a 
heroic poem in soaring and flowery prose." P. 103 : " Ancient his- 
tory is always more or less epic and dramatic, an inexhaustible source 
of pleasure and feeling," etc. Quintilian, " De Instit. Orat.," ii. 4, 
says naively: " Graecis historis plerumque poetico similis esse 
licentia." Not only " Graecis " ! 

' For more complete treatment and establishment of this idea, see 
my " Contemporary Frenchmen," Berlin, 1901, pp. 19 et seg. 



8 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

as exactly as possible, and arranging them according to 
external resemblances for the sake of convenience. Yet 
Herbert Spencer, for example, deprecated as untrust- 
worthy the use of the word science for such a mere cata- 
logue and arrangement of bare empiric facts. Now his- 
tory is not a science in the strict sense. Success may for 
the moment appear to crown the efforts of the philo- 
sophic historian to trace a causal connection between 
events, and lay down laws governing their progress; 
but criticism makes short work of theories so hatched 
and dogmatic assertions without any facts behind them. 
Nor is it a descriptive science. The events it registers 
are forever withdrawn from actual observation, exam- 
ination, and experiment, and nothing can be re-estab- 
lished from the traces and records that are left, or from 
the testimony of human witnesses, except by the as- 
sistance of the subjective factor in guessing at conclu- 
sions, interpreting, and rounding off.^ 

Inaccuracy of description need only be mentioned, in 
the second place, as a less essential objection. History 
is never successful in conceiving events and setting them 
down exactly as they took place. It is superfluous to 
recall the innumerable- hackneyed anecdotes of the im- 
possibility of acquiring from the various accounts of 
eye-witnesses an Irrefutable picture of any event whatso- 
ever. Possibly in the comparatively near future the 
developed methods of observing and recording facts, 
the increased use of the phonograph and the snapshot, 

* H. V. Humboldt, " The Task of the Historian," Proceedings of 
the Royal Academy of Sciences, Berlin, for the years 1820-21, Berlin, 
1822, p. 305: "Thus no more truth is to be ascribed to the facts of 
history than to the results of tradition and investigation." 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 9 

may enable us to obtain an objective record of that 
aspect of phenomena visible to the senses which will be 
definite and incontrovertible. 

But even so the gain will not be very great. The 
aspect of history which is represented by concrete events 
is far the least important. That which is great and 
vital, the drama of the human soul, is completely hidden 
from direct observation. The historian's task, accord- 
ing to Maurenbrecher, is to study the inner life of the 
actors in events, and give an account of their motives 
and aims. Let him devote himself to this task, by all 
means ; but what likelihood is there that he will solve it 
correctly? Knowledge of what is in the heart of a man 
is, according to the Bible, reserved to God alone. The 
maxim of the ancients, " know thyself," is, in fact, the 
recognition that to do so is difficult, wellnigh impossible. 
The secret of a man's personality is often hidden from 
his own inward view, and impenetrable to that of an out- 
sider. No one who has the least suspicion of the com- 
plexity of a highly differentiated intellectual life will 
attempt to penetrate the inner processes of thought, the 
underlying motives of action, and lay bare the ramifica- 
tions that interpenetrate the bedrock of character, tem- 
perament, and the subconscious life of man, the alluvial 
deposits of his life's experience, and the mysteries of 
the attractions and repulsions that sway him. The his- 
torian has to deal with psychology In the concrete, with 
supposition and conjecture, not science: he is a creative 
poet whose characterization may be illuminating and 
convincing like that of the novelist or the playwright, 
without any assurance that it thereby resembles the 
truth. Every historian, even of the most moderate 



10 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

gifts, tends to conceive the great figures of the past and 
the present after a fashion of his own, different from 
that of his fellows. Wallenstein is far from being a 
unique instance of a character " whose portrait wavers " 
(Schiller) in history. Seldom, indeed, save in the case 
of persons wholly or semi fabulous, who are not really 
known at all, or known only through a single author, 
is there any unanimity of judgment or delineation. Con- 
fusion comes as soon as the sources of information are 
more abundant, until inaccuracies, contradictions, and 
subjective interpolations hide the true physiognomy of 
the person who is described, even from the sharpest 
critic.^ 

Anyone who has sufficiently emerged from obscurity 
to arouse even the most transitory interest on the part 
of his contemporaries will throw up his hands in amaze- 
ment over the judgments passed upon him, his person- 
ality and his influence, and over the personal im- 
pressions he has made on different minds ; and the more 
important the individual, the wider the circle of ob- 
servations that he excites, and the greater the number 
of busybodies who feel called upon to express an opinion 
about him, the more striking is the distortion which his 
image undergoes. The incapacity of most people to see 
others as they are, or to understand them, is only 
equalled by the impudent assurance with which they give 
utterance to their senseless and superficial judgments 
upon them, judgments often hatefully stupid and unjust. 

* K. Lamprecht, "Old and New Tendencies in the Science of His- 
tory," Berlin, 1896, p. 18: "The history of persons is always romantic 
in character, because the inner motives are beyond our knowledge " 
— a remarkable admission from a historian, and one to be re- 
membered. 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY ii 

Let a historian even venture to record the events of 
the present or very recent past, and he finds himself 
assailed by passionate objections, not all inspired by 
party feelings, by a storm of justification not confined 
to those concerned in their concealment of truths painful 
to their vanity or interest. The excited opposition called 
forth by the German histories of Tritetschke and Sybel, 
Justin McCarthy's " History of Our Own Times," 
Kinglake's " History of the Crimean War," Thiers' 
" History of the Revolution and the Empire," Louis 
Blanc's " History of the July Monarchy," and Gabriel 
Hanotaux' " History of the Third Republic," may be 
recalled.^ What is depressing is that this arid con- 
troversy seldom contributes to real enlightenment on 
the points in dispute : it issues finally only in the setting 
up of one assertion and one opinion against another. 
Certainly no such storm was roused by Grote, Momm- 
sen, or Maspero. At the most, some unexpected in- 
scriptions will roguishly emerge and scatter to the winds 
pages or even whole sections of their narrative. But 

^ Apart from polemical articles in newspapers and magazines, 
see, among others: against Thiers' character of Napoleon, Barni, 
" Napoleon i^' at son Historien, M. Thiers," Paris, 1869, also 
Lanfrey and Taine: against Sybel's account of the effect of Sadowa 
on the French Government, Emile Ollivier, " L'Empire Liberal," vol. 
Viii., "L'Annee Fatale," Paris, 1906. 

It may be noted, by way of example, that Livy's patriotism pre- 
vented him from mentioning the conquest of Rome by Porsenna, 
with which he was familiar; and that Grote, in his "History of 
Greece," vol. ii., pp. 216, 217, relates that the early English his- 
torians, from Hardyng and Monmouth to HoHnshed and Milton, 
recorded the descent of the English Kings from Brutus and Julius 
Caesar, and that, when later students suppressed this account as 
fabulous, they were accused on that ground of want of patriotism — 
even of crime. 



12 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

Alciblades and Themistocles, Marlus and Sulla, 
Rameses and Psammetichus, hold their peace whatever 
is said of them. They are wise. Could they express 
an opinion, they would, like the living, utterly fail to 
recognize themselves in the pictures drawn by their his- 
torians. 

Objective truth is as inaccessible to the writers of 
history as is Kant's " Thing in Itself " to human knowl- 
edge. For the events of the past he has to rely upon 
official records, which even the most cautious and well- 
informed criticism cannot wholly clear of the colouring 
given them by the desire to conceal unpleasing facts, or 
upon the circumstantial evidence and the testimony of 
eye-witnesses whose unreliability is the only certain 
thing about them. At the best, his representation of 
character is an embodiment of psychological guesses that 
may or may not be fortunate. The attempt to discern 
the causal connection of events and the laws that reg- 
ulate them is often merely arbitrary, and frequently 
quite capricious. Written history can never compass 
the actual event. It is not science, but literature: a 
branch of fiction, good, bad, or indifferent; a supposition 
as to the way in which things might have happened ; an 
attempt to show the way in which they ought to have 
happened, or to prove that they did, as a matter of fact, 
happen in this or that way; a subjective intuition on the 
part of men who have to depend on vague, uncertain, or 
even inadequate information; who are, consciously or 
unconsciously, influenced by certain tendencies, and led 
away by their own feelings, prejudices, sympathies, and 
antipathies, even where they are honest, which is not 
always the case. 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 13 

Carlyle was a historian, but he did not hesitate to 
describe his own profession in the most contemptuous 
terms : ^ " Alas, what mountains of dead ashes, wreck, 
and burnt bones, does assiduous Pedantry dig up from 
the Past Time, and name it History and Philosophy of 
History . . . and over your Historical Library it is as 
if all the Titans had written for themselves : ' Dry rub- 
bish shot here ' ! " 

It is as superficial, as unreasonable to identify history 
as it is and history as it is written as to confound the 
processes of Nature with the delusions of the human 
senses. ._- | 

History has its own existence, different, apart from, j 

and transcending written history, before which it was, \ V\ 

which it called into being, and which awkwardly tries to 
follow it. History in the widest sense is the sum of the \ 

episodes of the human struggle for existence. The \ 

definition hardly needs explanation. History, it implies, /*" \ 
is the record of all, great and small, that man has done ^ 
and suffered, all that he has thought, imagined, and 
achieved within the limits of that natural and artificial 
environment into which he was born, in which he has 
to live, and by which any satisfaction of his needs and 
impulses is conditioned. Between the dreary existence 
of the most obscure and miserable creature upon earth 
and the triumphal progress of a world conqueror there 
is no essential difference. In each the same psycho- 
physical forces are at work; each is determined by the 
same natural laws. The fate of the one is of interest to 
no one in the wide world save himself; his departure is 

^Carlyle, "Past and Present," London (Ward, Lock and Co.), no 
date, p. 36. 



14 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

as unnoticed as his entrance : the other is a ruler of men, 
whose thoughts and actions dominate the lives of thou- 
sands — nay, millions — of his fellow-creatures. Yet the 
difference between them is quantitative, not qualitative. 
Mankind is instinctively aware of this essential equality 
of all human individualities and their destinies, whether 
they be such as enter into the purview of the historian, 
or such as for him possess no significance, or, it may be, 
are merely creatures of the imagination. Any char- 
acter, whether real or imaginary, great or small, that is 
so described that we feel the impress of his reality, can 
enter into the circumstances of his life, share intimately 
in his thoughts and feelings, joys and sorrows, fills as 
important a place in our minds and memories as any 
hero of world-wide renown. Alexander the Great is 
perhaps no better known and no more admired than 
Robinson Crusoe; many a mighty general or statesman 
might envy the fame of the wandering scholar Thomas 
Platter, or Knight Hans von Schweinichen. The immor- 
tality of Samuel Johnson does not rest on his works, in 
which the present generation finds small pleasure, but 
on the insight into every detail of the man and his daily 
existence given us by the faithful Boswell. Julie, 
Ophelia, Jane Eyre, Virginia, Manon Lescaut are nearer 
to the mind and heart of posterity than Cleopatra, 
Agrippina, or Queen Anne. A creation like Goethe's 
Wilhelm Meister, or Gottfried Keller's Poor Henry, 
which the seeing eye of genius has lent the vivid touch 
of individuality, and placed before us as a man, is as 
unforgettable as any historical character whatsoever. 
Across the memory of the human race past events flit 
like shadows; no fixed boundaries separate the real from 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 15 

the imaginary. Howsoever powerful a great man's 
influence may have been on his contemporaries and im- 
mediate successors, it seldom lasts a hundred, never a 
thousand, years, and for posterity he is but one among 
the myriad causes, near and remote, that have each 
played their indistinguishable part in creation, without 
possessing any immediate significance in themselves. 
With the loss of their direct influence, there passes even 
from the men who have really lived and have made 
history that which distinguishes them alike from the 
great mass of average mankind, who live unknown, and 
leave no mark behind them, and from the creations of 
the poetic imagination, than whom they become not 
more interesting but less, if their human personality 
have not been made real to us by the artistic methods 
with which history proper has nothing to do.^ 

I have defined history as the sum of the episodes that 
make up man's struggle for existence. In it, therefore, 
is included not only the combatant man, but the foes 
with which he has unceasingly to struggle — that is, not 
only his human competitors for the conditions of ex- 
istence, but Nature herself. The play of the world 
forces, whether regular, as they normally are, or con- 
vulsive, as upon occasion, are as much a part of history 
as the course of man's efforts to assert and maintain 
himself against all other powers. 

There is a recent historical school that concerns itself 
solely with spiritual and moral forces in history, and 

* p. Lacombe, " De I'Histoire consideree comme Science," Paris, 
1894, Introduction, p. cxii: "The artistic historian has, as his first 
aim, to stir the feelings, even if his method be that of actuality. . . . 
My objection to him is that he brings in narratives and considerations 
that have, or pretend to have, a scientific character," 



i6 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

conceives it as the conflict, triumph, defeat, and mutual 
adjustment of human wills, leaving altogether on one 
side, as unimportant and worthy only of a casual notice, 
any events that have not been completed in human 
thought or feeling before being translated into act. It 
tends to despise the old chroniclers,^ who faithfully de- 
vote the same space to recording dearths, earthquakes, 
and floods, hail-storms, unusual cold in winter or heat 
in summer, and the appearances of comets, that they 
gave to wars, coronations, and the deaths of princes, 
thus assigning the same importance to events resulting 
from the operation of human will and those originating 
in the blind chance over which man has no control. 
This contempt is misplaced. The modesty of the 
honest old chroniclers is more consonant with the true 
function of the historian than the lofty confidence of 
those modern adepts who arrogate to themselves the 
decision as to what is and what is not important on the 
wide stream of the processes of the universe, of nature, 
and of human life. 

The purely natural events that are entirely outside the 
action of the human will have had a greater influence on 
the destiny, not only of individuals, groups, or nations, 
but of human existence as a whole, than the whole range 
of what is assumed by historians to be essential and im- 
portant — than the foundation of states, the establish- 
ment of religions, the rise and development of social 
institutions, the conceptions of law and property, con- 

* All the Renaissance historians modestly call their histories 
" Chronica " — e.g., to name only those of the sixteenth century, Carlo, 
Cluverius, Gamerus, Genebrard, Kupferschmied, Macker, and Ne- 
ander. 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 17 

stitutlonal and metaphysical ideas. An ice age of some 
thousand years' duration, following upon a considerable 
period of temperate warmth, will more completely trans- 
form all human conditions than any possible action of 
a man or a people. Even a local disturbance may 
cause changes within a limited area of time and space 
at least as great as any efforts of human will and energy. 
If the disappearance of Atlantis be no fiction, but a fact, 
is it not a fact far more significant for humanity than 
any State formation to which history devotes volumes 
— nay, libraries? Has not the separation of England 
from the mainland, established by geology, had far 
greater political consequences than the Norman Inva- 
sion under William the Conqueror — consequences that 
at the close of thousands of years are far from being 
exhausted? The Great Flood recorded in the history 
of nearly every people, the earthquakes that destroyed 
Lisbon in 1755, San Francisco in 1903, the fires that 
laid London in ashes in 1666, Chicago in 1874, have 
been far more destructive of human life than most of 
the sieges, battles, and campaigns described at such 
length in history. 

There is no historical justification for any such an- 
tithesis of intellectual and natural forces, of human will 
and chance. Any line of distinction must be arbitrary, 
any separation artificial. The boundary between his- 
tory and the philosophy of history is crossed when any 
attempt Is made to select among the forces which have 
determined, and do still determine, human destiny, one 
which Is regarded as essential, and to neglect the rest. 
History aims at the description of events ; the philosophy 
of history claims to understand their causal connection 



i8 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

and their meaning. No sound conclusions can be 
reached by a duaHstic philosophy of history which re- 
fuses to recognize the same natural forces and laws at 
work everywhere, causing islands and whole continents 
to disappear beneath or rise above the ocean, and calling 
forth individual men to be conquerors and lawgivers, 
to mould and model nations, or which turns away its 
gaze from the irrational accidents of lifeless matte' and 
closes its eyes to all but spiritual forces.^ Who can say 
what would have happened if the Armada had con- 
quered England? Europe, at any rate, would not have 
been what it is to-day; and the cause of the difference 
between what it is to-day and what it might have been 
is surely the storm that destroyed the Armada — a mere 
accident, a blind natural force that could by no stretch 
of language be described as spiritual or moral. How 
would history have developed supposing that Grouchy 
had marched on Waterloo, and so decided the battle, 
which after midday stood even, in Napoleon's favour? 
Was it blind chance or Grouchy's will that decided it 
otherwise? 

It is impossible, when looking at the course of his- 
tory, to distinguish what is due to the influence of 
natural events and what to that of human will, unless we 
wilfully and without any rational justification leave 
aside or neglect one whole aspect of things. The naive 
chronicler may be open to the charge of artlessly string- 

^ Georg Simmel, " Problems of the Philosophy of History," Leip- 
zig, 1892, p. i: "If history is to be more than a puppet-show, it 
must record psychic processes." Yes, but does Simmel prove that we 
are not the puppets of the forces at work in nature? He assumes 
that which has to be proved — namely, that man makes his history, 
instead of its being made by nature through him. 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 19 

ing together, after the manner of a gossiping village 
barber, odd fragments of information that mean nothing 
to the reader of another age or place. At the same time 
it must not be forgotten that the pretentious historian, 
who presents the results of his critical research as a con- 
tribution to science, and considers his style like an artist, 
does, by the very fact of selection, introduce into his mat- 
ter a philosophical tendency which belongs to him, and 
not to it. The objection to Zola's theory of naturalism 
in fiction is valid against the writer who selects the 
human will as the only motive-power of importance in 
history. Zola claimed to give a complete representation 
of actual life as it is. It was pointed out that, as a mat- 
ter of fact, he selected by subjective inclination, with 
reference to an end subjectively conceived, a few aspects 
of actuality, which he then linked together as it suited 
him, and interpreted in accordance with his own idea. 
Thus, history at the moment when it thinks itself most 
objective is merely naturalistic fiction, merely " history 
through the medium of a temperament,"^ with the hand- 
icap that the action of temperament in altering and 
blurring lines Is far more fatal on the complicated and 

^ This passage had long been written when the same idea was 
expressed, almost in the same words, by Professor Gabriel Monod, 
in an address which he gave on the occasion of his forty years' 
jubilee as teacher of history at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in 
Paris, May 26, 1907. "Zola," he said, "has defined Art as Nature 
through the medium of a temperament. . . . We see historical actu- 
ality through a temperament also. We study it as history. But if we 
wish to re-animate it, a personal creative effort is necessary in the 
representation, and the reinforcement of science by art. Historical 
actuality is never known to us in all the complexity of its exact and 
unconditional truth. ... It is a dream-face." The correspondence 
is so remarkable as to be worth noting. 



20 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

crowded canvas of history than In the simple portraiture 
of the novehst. 

History is not a descriptive science, because it has no 
means by which phenomena can be immediately per- 
ceived or objectively determined. Far less, when it is 
absolutely impossible for it to foretell a single event with 
even approximate certainty, can it be called an exact 
science, of which the distinguishing mark is precisely 
this power to determine beforehand what under certain 
conditions must happen. It is driven on to seek to know 
the laws of which phenomena are the manifestation — 
immutable laws, the same to-day, to-morrow, yesterday.^ 
Froude ^ held that history cannot foretell events that 
depend upon the will of man, because that will is free. 
But this freedom of the will is a dogma incapable of 
proof. The law of causality which governs our thought 
admits of no metaphysical vagueness. It compels us to 
assume that the will, a force that initiates movement, is, 
like every other force, subject to that law. Its apparent 

^ Hume (sect. 2, part ii.) demands an eschatology of all sciences. 
St. Simon also remarks that it is the task of all sciences " to see 
in order to foresee" {voir, pour prevoir), and Condorcet felt this so 
strongly that, in the last book of his " Esquisse d'un Tableau His- 
torique du Progres de I'Esprit Humain," he boldly attempts to fore- 
cast future history, declaring: "If man can almost confidently fore- 
tell natural phenomena, as soon as he knows their laws . . . why 
should it appear chimerical to represent the probable destiny of 
the human race side by side with historical results?" P. S. L. 
Buchez ("Introduction a la Science de I'Histoire," second edition, 
Paris, i8i2, book i., chap, ii.) maintains with Condorcet that history 
can foresee and foretell, and is thus a science. What a pity that 
he was so modest as to refrain from foreseeing and foretelling a 
single event! 

" James Anthony Froude, " Short Studies on Great Subjects," Lon- 
don, 1867, vol. i., p. II. 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 21 

freedom Is an illusion, due to the fact that the mind does 
not perceive the relation between the stimulus to an act 
of will and the resultant operation of the will. Each act 
of will is the one possible response of a given organism 
to a given stimulus under given conditions. A difference 
in one element in the system, a different constitution of 
the organism, a different kind of strength of stimulus, or 
its application under different circumstances, will cause 
the response of the will to be different, but nothing else 
can alter it. Conversely, the elements are not the result 
of chance or arbitrary attraction; they are links in the 
iron chain of cause and effect that extends into infinity, 
above and below the limits of our knowledge. Deny 
this, and you deny causality, and declare that the planets 
are not strictly determined in their course by mechanical 
necessity, but can move at will in or out of their ap- 
pointed track. The thoughts and actions of men are 
regulated by the same compulsion that keeps the stars In 
their course, and were history a science like astronomy, 
even though the behaviour of the elements might re- 
main hidden, it would at least be able to foretell the 
actions of men and that part of history which depends 
upon the operation of human will, just as astronomy is 
able to foretell the movements of the heavenly bodies. 

An historian who confines himself to the sober speech 
of fact, and restrains his " seething brain " and his " eye 
in a fine frenzy rolling," can only venture upon prophe- 
cies so general and so much of the nature of platitudes 
that they rouse no interest at all. It is safe to foretell 
that no human Institution can last for ever, that every 
State, every society, every law, every custom, must in 
time alter or disappear. We all know or guess so much. 



22 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

History cannot give us even the smallest reliable indica- 
tion as to the things about which we should really like to 
know — ^namely, when and how the existing order is to 
terminate, and what is to take its place. Any would-be 
astrologer or cheiromant who had nothing more to tell 
those who came to him to have the veil of the future 
withdrawn than that they must one day die, would soon 
be labelled ass or knave by the most credulous of his 
clients. In one word, nothing can be foretold of the 
course of human life, whether of individuals, groups, or 
communities, beyond the universal law of elementary 
biological necessity, to which no exception is known — the 
law which is itself only a particular instance of the com- 
plex interrelation and interaction of biological and cos- 
mic laws whose concrete operations we are completely 
unable to forecast, ignorant as we are of the extent and 
action of the forces at work in human life. The his- 
torian has been paradoxically described as the prophet of 
the past. It is one of those phrases that suggest meaning 
without really conveying any. If it does mean anything, 
it can only be this: the historian is no man of science, 
but a seer who guesses or divines, not the future, but the 
past, and if you don't believe him, down with your shil- 
ling. 

History may have no scientific value, though it Is said 
to be a means of education: historia magistra vita. 
Even this claim cannot be substantiated. Written his- 
tory does not touch the realities of history; it hardly 
even skims over its extreme surface. It can only search, 
guess, surmise. But without accurate knowledge there 
can be no useful instruction. Moreover, the information 
conveyed, even if accurate, could be of no use to those 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 23 

who have new actions before them. Every moment in 
history is the result of a relation between the forces in 
operation and the general conditions under which they 
operate, and the combination can never be either re- 
peated or modified. Therefore, it is of no assistance to a 
man living now to know how certain people acted under 
given circumstances in the past. The circumstances are 
not the same ; and even if he wished to imitate the action, 
he could not. Were he to make some clumsy attempt, 
the result would not be identical. As a matter of fact, 
no single person or group of persons has ever allowed 
their action to be determined by historical precedent. In 
forming a resolution, the determining factor is the neces- 
sity of the present, not the experience of the past. The 
only way in which more or less accurate historical knowl- 
edge does operate is seen in the case where one genera- 
tion transmits to another a prejudice, an attraction or 
repulsion, a confidence or mistrust, an appreciation or 
depreciation, that may have originally been sound, and 
has not been discovered by the descendant to be so no 
longer. In this case knowledge in the ancestor creates 
ignorance in the descendant, and gives rise to conclusions 
that are false, because based on premises no longer ac- 
curate. The great conquerors, rulers, and law givers 
have never possessed what is called the historical sense : 
that they had It not was the condition of their success. 
Their eyes, troubled by no visions of the past, were fixed 
on the visible present. With no thought for what had 
stirred the men of bygone days, they saw the needs and 
opportunities of the present. History was never their 
teacher. 

As a matter of fact, the mass of mankind have no real 



24 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

— no organic, If I may use the word — Interest in his- 
torical narrative or in history Itself. They have a deep- 
seated Impulse to observe, to study, and as far as possible 
to understand nature, to use all their available knowl- 
edge to interpret her. Long before they have consciously 
reflected, they are dimly aware that knowledge is their 
best weapon, both of attack and defence, in the llfe-and- 
death struggle they have to wage with her; that the 
wages of Ignorance here are death, and the rewards of 
every advance In knowledge are greater security, a longer 
tenure, and better conditions of existence. They cherish 
such cognizance as they have won, and transmit It as 
their most precious possession to their descendants. The 
mystic tales of forgotten secrets possessed by the ancient 
Egyptians, Chaldees, Indians, and Aztecs, represent, no 
doubt, some branch of nature knowledge acquired at one 
time and again lost. The play of nature's mighty forces, 
the phenomena revealed once or periodically In a per- 
plexing whirl of movement, rouse In man an excitement 
that lasts from childhood to old age, a noble curiosity 
that compels all save the weak in Intellect, the man who 
is a morbid exception, to gaze and to try to understand. 
No such instinctive desire for knowledge exists in the 
case of his own past. The vast majority even of edu- 
cated people are completely Indifferent to it. They never 
think of it. They are at no pains to remember it. If 
they consulted their personal inclinations, they would 
never either burden their own memories with it, or as- 
sign any importance to burdening the memories of their 
descendants. 

Every now and then the papers contain the results of 
the examination of soldiers in history; and they invari- 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 25 

ably prove that people are either completely Ignorant, 
even of quite recent events, or that they have a ridicu- 
lously false conception of them. Italians of this gen- 
eration know neither Cavour nor Garibaldi/ Germans 
have never heard the name of Moltke or Roon, think 
that Bismarck was a great ruler or general, and are ab- 
solutely ignorant of the war of 1870. Frenchmen know 
nothing of Gambetta or Thiers, of Sedan, or the revolu- 
tion that followed it, and believe the most mythical and 
ridiculous stories about Napoleon.^ And these are 
mostly young persons who have learned at least to read 
and write in their passage through the elementary 
school, and could very easily instruct themselves In any 
subject that they found attractive or Interesting. Ex- 
perience proves that the very greatest historical event 
retains a real and vivid place in human memory only so 
long as there are men living who took part In It, who 
were personally affected by It, who watched it with keen 
Interest and excitement themselves, or who have heard 
tell of It from someone who himself took part In or wit- 
nessed It — men, in a word, to whom the event was di- 
rectly or Indirectly part of their own experience. This 
applies to all great events, and limits their remembrance 
to three generations at the most — contemporaries, their 
children, who catch from the lips of their parents some- 
thing of the force and freshness that belongs to the sight 
of one's own eyes, and perhaps the third generation, 

* Paola Lombroso, " Mario Carrara, Nella Penombra della Civilti 
(Da un' inchiesta sul pensiero del popolo)," Torino, 1906, pp. 47 
et seq. 

' Roland, " L'Education Patriotique du Soldat," Paris, 1908, 
passim. 



26 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

who may, if they are lucky, hear the story at the family 
board of " I have heard my father tell . . ." But the 
tale loses so much of its colour in this second relation 
that the impression it makes on the hearer is slight — too 
slight to impel him to transmit It to his children in his 
turn. The limitation of remembrance to three genera- 
tions is, in fact, a law based upon the actual processes 
of memory. Under normal healthy conditions only a 
revival of the associations or emotions that originally ac- 
companied an impression will call it up again to the 
surface of consciousness. As a rule however, strong 
emotion is only aroused and a chain of associations set 
going by the immediate individual sense-stimulus and 
prompt reaction of consciousness and will that is present 
in a personal experience; no such effect is produced by 
the mere hearing and reading of words, which as often 
as not fail to suggest to the average dull and lethargic 
intelligence the ideas into which they require to be trans- 
lated. The account of a past event with no immediate 
practical bearing awakens no emotion, starts no manifold 
and diversified chain of associations: a more or less 
isolated fact in consciousness, it is soon forgotten, and 
has little prospect of ever being revived again in the form 
of a recollection. 

The law of three generations applies to events con- 
nected with a place, a tribe, or a species, and to the his- 
tory of the family also, which should be of the first and 
greatest interest to men of any degree of intellectual 
development. Civilized man — savages can for the 
moment be left out of account — normally knows nothing 
of his ancestors farther back than his grandparents. 
Beyond three generations all is obscurity, even under 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 27 

the most favourable circumstances, when a family has 
remained fixed in one spot, has lived and moved and had 
its being in the same surroundings, and might find in the 
unchanging names of everything around it, whether the 
work of man or nature, in the buildings and the country- 
side, so many mnemonic aids to memory. If the family 
change its dwelling, even a recent past will vanish more 
quickly and completely with the disappearance of the 
landmarks and images that to some extent helped to 
keep it alive. At the best, an uncertain, waving legend, 
with no distinct features, is all that then remains of the 
ancestral story. On the journey of life, man travels 
within a little circle of light that is extinguished with 
him, and leaves no trace behind it save a dazzling 
of the eyes of some fellow-traveller. Outside this circle 
all is eternal darkness, broken only here arid there by 
scattered sparks — a darkness that few care to try to 
illuminate. 

To this stern law of oblivion an exception seems to be 
afforded by certain great festival days in commemoration 
of important historical events yearly celebrated after 
thousands of years by the whole population of a locality 
or country. Rome still keeps as a festal day April 2 1 , on 
which day it is naively assumed that the city was founded 
2,660 years ago (753 B.C.). For four and a half cen- 
turies Basle has celebrated St. James's Day (August 
26) ; every 9th of May Orleans recalls its deliverance 
from the English besiegers by Joan of Arc ( 1429) ; and 
England remembers on November 5 the failure of Guy 
Fawkes' Gunpowder Plot, etc. But such remembrance 
is an illusion. The populace celebrate n festival without 
thinking much of its origin. Out of thousands of Eng- 



28 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

lish boys who dance round Guy Fawkes' bonfire, hardly a 
hundred know anything about him. They sing away — 

" Remember, remember 
The fifth of November," 

but would be hard put to it to explain why the day 
should be remembered. In the course of the last century 
the custom has grown of establishing State celebrations 
on historical days, in which the population, willy-nilly, 
must take part, since the law prescribes it, and it is 
done by all public offices and institutions. In Germany 
there is Sedan Day, in France July 14, in Italy Constitu- 
tion Day, etc. But, recent as is the establishment of 
most of these celebrations, their origins are already 
becoming dim. In the schools, teachers Impress the 
significance of Sedan Day upon the minds of their pupils 
by the writing of essays; and not without reason, for 
there are plenty of grown-up people to whom the name 
of Sedan conveys very little distinct meaning. Few of 
the countless multitudes who conscientiously celebrate 
the French national festal day, drink, dance, and enjoy 
the fireworks and illuminations, know anything about the 
storming of the Bastille; and there are numbers of 
Italians to whom no definite idea is suggested by " lo 
Statuto." The masses enjoy the jollification: they like 
to have it organized and patronized by the classes. The 
occasion matters little: to them the carnival, the satur- 
nalia, is the thing. What appears to the cultured 
minority as a historical reminder is to the majority, in 
spite of their board-school education, no different from 
any other spiritual or temporal holiday. It is in records, 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 29 

and not In the consciousness of man, that the historical 
part Is preserved. Only In this sense Is there a grain of 
truth In that arrogant assertion that " History Is that 
portion of the world's story which Is established by tradi- 
tion, and recorded In written history." History goes on, 
whether recorded or no ; whether Its recollection by man 
Is artificially preserved or allowed to fall Into natural 
oblivion. Such knowledge as we possess Is due solely to 
those witnesses of events who. Instead of relying solely 
upon oral transmission, have preserved their experiences 
by writing and other arts. Without such aid the most 
civilized nations, who have attained the highest Intel- 
lectual and scientific development, would remember as 
little of their own history as the rude barbarians, from 
whom even the Immediate past is shrouded In Impene- 
trable darkness. 

The almost organic Indifference of mankind to the 
past, to whatever lies outside the range of their Imme- 
diate sense perception and apprehension, Is an observed 
fact that it Is vain to attempt to argue away. It seems, 
however, to be contradicted by the equally Incontrover- 
tible fact of the existence of history In a highly developed 
form, regarded as a necessary element In a cultured edu- 
cation, and claiming the attention of governments, so- 
cieties, and countless individuals In the investigation and 
preservation of the recorded past. The contradiction Is 
more apparent than real. A knowledge of history, un- 
like that of Nature and her laws, is not a biological ne- 
cessity: It Is a psychological, and, above all, a sociologi- 
cal need. 

The Individual, psychological basis upon which the 
origin and continued development of history rests Is two- 



30 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

fold, depending on two fundamental human attributes — 
curiosity and self-love. 

The origin of curiosity is the demand of the nerve- 
centres for impressions that must of necessity proceed 
from the external world. This demand, at first instinct- 
ive and accompanied in its satisfaction by a certain 
pleasure, acquires pari passu with the development of the 
organism the element of purpose : the impressions to be 
received from the external world must be such as antici- 
pate danger, and assist in the provision of nourishment 
and other gratifications. In the struggle for existence 
active curiosity is an advantage to the individual : it is 
the way of enlightenment. As differentiation advances, 
curiosity, which was directed to the mediately or imme- 
diately practical needs of the individual, forgets its 
origin in the functional requirements of the nerve- 
centres, and its purpose as alleviating the struggle for 
existence, and becomes that desire to know which, ap- 
parently severed from all selfish aims, strives solely for , 
the attainment of new knowledge and the comprehension 
of the world of phenomena presented to its view.^ And 
the individual whose curiosity has thus risen to the desire 

* Hermann Lotze ("Microcosm: Idea of a Natural History and 
History of Mankind: an Anthropological Essay," Leipzig, 1864, vol. 
iii., p. 3) is well aware of the meaning of curiosity, and continues 
that it is quite wrong to speak contemptuously of the " restlessness 
of vulgar curiosity," which, " without any sense of the different im- 
portance of different questions, tries to invent a history of the 
origin of every fact of experience, great or small." But he relapses 
into his usual mysticism when he goes on: "Yet it is from this vulgar 
curiosity that there was developed the profound longing to see this 
riddle . of the universe, which is the history of the earth, emerge 
wholly from the higher world, and return thither when it has com- 
pleted the task for which it was sent forth." 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 31 

to know is made uncomfortable and uneasy by every gap 
in his knowledge of the phenomena before him and of 
their causal connection. Just as a wild beast is terrified 
by a dark cavern difficult of access in his hunting- 
ground, and regards it as a mysterious danger until he 
has gathered the courage to penetrate to its depths, so 
man cannot rest until he fills up his gaps with solid 
masonry or hides them behind some painted screen. To 
the individual who has once risen to the desire to know, 
the darkness of the past is as troubhng as that of the 
future, and the question of remote causes as torturing as 
that of those near at hand. In this desire to know and to 
understand lies the origin of all sciences, and of all super- 
stitions and other systems of self-deception and false 
guesses. Philosophic speculation, seeking to find the final 
cause, resolved itself for most men into the theological 
revelation which reveals nothing to the understanding. 
The theory of knowledge investigates the contents of our 
consciousness reduced to their simplest terms, and en- 
deavors to discover their origin. Prophecy, magic, and 
the other black arts that strive to penetrate the darkness 
of the future, seemed for long to the keenest and most 
mature intellects of the race to represent the brightest 
branch of human knowledge.^ It is only necessary to 

^ R. Campbell Thompson, " Late Babylonian Letters," London, 
1907. Letter of the King of Assyria to Saduna, in Borsippe. He 
advises him especially to take possession of the clay tablets in 
the temple at Ezidda, with war prophecies inscribed on them: "If 
there be any charm I have not taught thee, and thou shouldst hear 
of it, search it out, and take and send to me." The importance at- 
tributed to the Sibylline books in Rome may be recalled. Compare 
also ^schylus, "Prometheus Vinctus," vers. 500 et seq., where 
Prometheus, citing the benefits he has conferred on man, meiitions 



32 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

recall the importance attached by Romans and Etruscans 
to the omens from the flight of birds and the mspection 
of their entrails in all State and religious observances: 
and in the East to the interpretation of dreams down to 
much more recent times. But the very eagerness of their 
desire to obtain foreknowledge of the future led men to 
subject the results of the would-be art of prophecy to 
such a severe examination as soon showed them to be 
mere twaddle, without so much as a kernel of truth. 
Cicero tells us that, late in antiquity, the augur, or harus- 
pex, had come to be regarded as a comic figure. 
Thoughtful men sadly admitted that means for the re- 
liable investigation of the future did not exist, and that 
this search, like that for the final cause, must be regret- 
fully abandoned. Thus, only the intellectually backward 
and absolutely uneducated sections of the populace con- 
tinued to believe in the primitive forms of revelation by 
lines on the hand, the interpretation of dreams, laying 
out of cards, astrology, the shapes in lead or coffee- 
grounds. Yet the irresistible desire to know the unknow- 
able lingers among the educated too. It Is seen In the 
tentative eschatology which philosophy has even yet not 
wholly renounced and In the delight with which a specu- 
lative forecast like Wells' " Anticipations " Is accepted 
by hundreds of thousands of people, who do not seem 
aware that the reason why such a speculation affords 
them so much pleasure Is simply that it corresponds ex- 

as very important that he taught him to interpret dreams, under- 
stand signs, and foretell the future by magic arts: 

" Tpbwovi re iroS\o{is juavLTK'rjs iffroixlca, 
K&Kpiva TTpCoTOi e^oveipdruv a XP'^I 
virap, yeviadai, Kk-qbbvas re dvffKplrovi 
iyvibpia airois ivodiovs re <tvij,^6\ovs," etc. 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 33 

actly with the knowledge, the assumption, the intentions 
and wishes of the present day, and in so far is a repre- 
sentation, not of the future, but of the present. 

The light which was turned upon the future also threw 
its weak and flickering beams across the darkness of the 
past. The practical value attaching to a knowledge of 
the future undoubtedly led men to busy themselves with 
it before they turned to the past. Magicians and sooth- 
sayers existed everywhere long before chroniclers and 
historians, and even to this day many races still living in 
a state of primitive barbarism, who care little or nothing 
about their traditions, are deeply interested in prophecy. 
But the desire to know threw, in the course of time, a 
more or less distinct light on one section after another of 
the whole circle of darkness around us, and so came in 
turn to try to penetrate the unknown sections of the 
past as it had tried to penetrate the future. It brooded 
over the questions that Milton put in Adam's mouth: 
" How came I thus, how here? " Imagination laid hold 
of the witnesses to the past, existing in the shape of un- 
certain recollections, confused and contradictory tradi- 
tions; monuments, such as buildings, carvings, tombs, 
furniture, or, in later times, inscriptions, coins, and rec- 
ords; and uncritically filled up all the gaps by the ar- 
bitrary exercise of its creative faculty. From such 
materials there have gradually developed connected 
narratives, in which the httle that is certain, much that 
is probable, and far more that is only possible or frankly 
invented,^ are so blended and welded together that not 

'Wilhelm v. Humboldt ("The Task of the Historian," Proceed- 
ings of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Berlin, for the years 1820-21, 
Berlin, 1822, Historico-Philological Section, p. 305) admits this 



34 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

only the hearer, but even the relator, ceases to be aware 
of the different parts of which his fable is composed, or 
to see where they join. The critical sense is very slightly 
developed in the majority of mankind. They have not 
the capacity, and hardly the wish, to distinguish between 
truth and delusion. Any confident assertion they accept 
without asking for proofs or criticizing their soundness. 
No assertion is ever doubted, mistrusted, or denied, un- 
less it either happens to be in glaring contradiction to 
something already well known or to injure someone's 
feelings and interests, especially in the latter case ; other- 
wise, so long as it contains in itself no inherent impossi- 
bilities, it is accepted at once, and occupies the position 
in consciousness of an accepted fact. As theology taught 
men the final causes in the universe, and soothsayers 
explained the secrets of the future from signs, history 
solved the riddles of the past. Fundamentally it be- 
longs to the same class as these two; its means are as 
incapable as theirs to satisfy man's desire for knowledge. 
Even now the great majority of mankind unhesitatingly 
accept the teachings of theology as to the origin of the 
universe, because, since they have no particular personal 
interest in not being deceived as to final causes, beyond 
a general curiosity, any explanation is as good as another. 
Most men of any power of thought at all ceased to 
believe in soothsayers when their forecasts did not come 
true. But the fact that history is to this day for the 
most part just as much in the air^ just such a tissue of 

almost naively: "The past is only partly visible in the world of 
the senses; part must be felt, resolved, guessed at. . . . It may seem 
questionable to allow the spheres of the historian and the poet to 
touch at any point. But it cannot be denied that their activities ar^ 
related." 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 35 

guess-work, intuition, masked wishes and desires as 
theology and prophecy is concealed from all save a very 
small minority, because it is only rarely that facts appear 
which definitely prove the falsity of any historical nar- 
rative, and because it is practically immaterial to the 
living whether the past, unchangeable to all eternity, is 
represented in one way or another. 

If information about final causes were as interesting 
to man as that about immediate ones, theology would 
long ago have vanished like the natural history of Pliny, 
the biology of Aristotle, and the cosmology of Ptole- 
m£Eus. If information about the past were as important 
to him as information about the future, they would long 
ago have seen that history has nothing more reliable to 
tell about the one than astrology or cheiromancy about 
the other, and that the historian who described himself 
as a backward-looking prophet ^ correctly estimated his 
own credibility as about equal to that of the soothsayer 
who pretends to reveal the future. 

Human curiosity demands an explanation of the past, 
and written history pretends to be able to give It. Man- 
kind Is satisfied with the connected narrative It presents, 
because they have no reason for questioning Its truth. 
It pleases them first because It satisfies a want, then 
because it Is uncommonly entertaining and exciting. The 
love of stories is Inborn in man. He delights to hear of 
a picturesque and melodramatic past, of extraordinary 
events to which common experience affords no parallel, 
and the deeds and destiny of unusual men. Historical 
narrative Is full of tragedies, dramas, comedies of char- 

^ The phrase was coined by Sainte-Beuve, who applied it to 
Bossuet. 



36 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

acter and intrigue, novels of adventure. But the excite- 
ment that it arouses is purely assthetic, and not essentially 
different from that with which one hears or reads the 
" Thousand and one Nights." It only differs from 
admitted fairy-tales by its piquant attempt to prove that 
everything did actually happen as it is set down. 

Curiosity, developing into the desire for information 
and knowledge, is, as I have said, one origin of the writ- 
ing of history; the other is self-love. Everyone thinks 
his doings important, and his experiences worthy of 
being preserved. Homer's Nestor, chanting the praises 
of the matchless men and deeds of his youth, with which 
the young generation has nothing to compare, is an 
eternal human type, civilized and uncivilized, primitive 
or modern. Man loves to imagine himself performing 
prodigies of strength and courage: he would fain be 
represented permanently in the role of conquering hero. 
This attitude flatters his self-esteem. Moreover, since 
a warlike exterior has always enriched its possessor with 
distinctions and privileges, it has a practical utility as 
well. 

The savage notches or smears upon his arms the 
number of enemies he has slain. The Indian paints the 
combat in which he has been victorious on the outside of 
his wigwam, and carries the scalps of the vanquished at 
his belt, while the custom of the tribe provides strictly 
that the number of eagle-feathers he wears when in 
battle array is no more than that of the warriors he has 
slain. These notches, smears, eagle-feathers, scalps and 
paintings are the earliest historical records, useless, in- 
deed, for the community, but full of flattering meaning 
for him whose deeds they testify and keep alive in the 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 37 

memories of contemporaries and those who come after, 
and of value, as a rule, for his family and posterity. 
Fame is a means to power in the hands of lordlings and 
tribal chieftains. They maintain their authority more 
easily, and without the necessity of resorting to com- 
pulsion, when their dependents and those whom they 
have subdued regard them with admiration and fear. 
Hence the bards retained to glorify their deeds by the 
Greeks of the mythical, heroic age, by the German and 
Scandinavian warrior kings and the Norman conquerors. 
Official history — history written with a purpose — is 
legitimately descended from the songs invented by the 
hired poets, the bards and skalds, for the glorification of 
the heroic deeds of their master and his forefathers; 
while the free-and-easy school of historical literature, 
that does not trouble about tendencies, and is sufficient to 
itself, in so far as it exists at all, derives from Herodotus 
and the pleasant writers of his school, who simply re- 
corded remarkable and unusual events. 

The march of intellectual development deepens our 
curiosity into the desire to know and transforms in- 
stinctive self-love into a conscious idea of the underlying 
unity of all individual interests, and an organized at- 
tempt to maintain and uphold them against other 
conflicting interests. In the simple, primitive conditions 
of savage or half-savage tribes, it was enough for the 
warrior to revel in the recollection of his exploits; he 
would create a flattering impression by recounting them 
to his comrades, and then assist their memories by 
mnemonic images, pictures, and signs, and the more 
effective medium of rhythmic verse. With the develop- 
ment of the horde or tribe Into a people politically or- 



38 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

ganized under a leader or clan, claiming and ruthlessly 
exercising prerogatives, tradition acquires the greatest 
practical importance for those in possession. In so far 
as their exceptional position at the head of the com- 
munity is the result of some exceptional deed, it is a 
matter of life and death to them to foster remembrance 
of this deed, and use it to rouse in the imagination of the 
people fear, admiration, superstitious reverence — every 
sentiment, in a word, that can assist to maintain and, 
where possible, to increase their power. The earliest 
historical records are inscriptions and carvings on the 
temples, palaces, fortresses or tombs set up by kings to 
celebrate their victorious wars and the battles they have 
won, the towns they have taken, the enemies they have 
captured or slaughtered, the people subjugated to their 
sway, the riches and possessions of every kind they have 
amassed. The historical Egyptian and Assyrian inscrip- 
tions we possess contain little else. Who had a natural 
interest in preserving from oblivion the facts which they 
commemorate ? Only the kings whose deeds they glorify 
and the descendants who inherited their power. It was 
matter of indifference, even of advantage, to everyone 
else that any recollection of them should fade Into the 
obscurity of the past. 

Conquerors, warriors, founders of dynasties, and the 
Inheritors of their power, are Impelled to transmit a 
knowledge of their exploits to those who come after by 
means of every kind of self-glorification in the shape of 
pictures, inscriptions, signs, etc., from the same motive 
which Induces the possessor of any kind of privilege, 
great or small, to preserve every justification of It — 
preserve or, where necessary, create. It may be asserted 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 39 

that down to quite recent times there has been practically 
no instance where a record has been authenticated or 
set up from the disinterested desire for knowledge of 
important events, but that in almost every case the 
creation and establishment of the record was due the 
furtherance of some private interest. Cloisters and 
bishoprics had their cartularies, in which many false 
entries are found mixed up with genuine ones; noble 
families had their archives; towns, guilds, and corpora- 
tions their charters and constitutions; and the object of 
all these parchments and papers was to guard the privi- 
leges of individuals and groups, not to provide material 
for scientific knowledge. 

Every institution arises in response to some require- 
ment. Even conquest, organized plunder, the murderous 
rule of a King of Dahomey, are means to the satisfaction 
of a powerful personality which revels in unlimited 
dominion and destruction. The creators of institutions 
need no support from history. Their establishment 
depends on their own organic necessities, and their title 
on their will and power to act in accordance with these 
necessities. But the necessities change and alter; the 
institutions due to their impetus remain. The moment 
comes when they have not the strength to maintain 
themselves, and no rational arguments are forthcoming 
for their defence. Then those to whom their continued 
existence is profitable call upon history to undertake the 
task of frightening off criticism and discouraging attacks, 
by throwing a rampart of pompous and dignified for- 
mulas round the structure that is collapsing from internal 
weakness. 

Goethe has summed up the course of all institutions 



40 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

in one immortal line, " Reason turns to nonsense, and 
benefit to nuisance " ; and Chateaubriand expresses the 
same idea when he says, " Every institution goes through 
three stages — utihty, privilege, abuse." When the day 
of utility is over the uses and abuses remain, and, if 
inconveniently called to account by the present, point 
back to the past with a wealth of mysterious sacerdo- 
talism. Examples are hardly necessary; one may suffice. 
The nobility was originally — about the ninth century — 
a class of strong, warlike men, who maintained order 
within their district, and defended the life and property 
of the people resident there against murder and robbery, 
demanding in return unconditional suzerainty over their 
subjects, and such share of their property as they chose 
to appropriate.^ Later, a single sovereign, the king, 
undertook the maintenance of peace at home, and a 
standing army, police, and a stable constitutional and 
legal system fulfilled all the tasks once belonging to the 
nobility. Though thus relieved of all their duties, they 
nevertheless gave up none of the privileges that had been 
won by their ancestors as recompense for the toils and 
dangers of perpetual conflict. They had no reply when, 
on the eve of the great Revolution, Beaumarchais, in the 
" Marriage of Figaro," spat in their faces the words, 
" Ye took the trouble to be born " ; they could only 

* H. Taine, " Origines de la France Contemporaine: L'Ancien 
Regime," Paris, 1887, p. 10: "In any case the noble of that epoch is 
the brave, the strong man, expert in the use of arms, who bares his 
breast at the head of a company instead of fleeing and paying ran- 
som . . . holds his ground, and protects a piece of land with his 
sword. For this work he needs no ancestors; he only needs courage; 
he is an ancestor himself ; men are too grateful for the benefits he 
confers to grumble over his title." 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 41 

point to old parchments and splendid seals for their title 
to fatten on the life-blood of the people. When the 
French peasantry after the Revolution stormed the 
castles, and first of all plundered the archives and burned 
the records, they were unconsciously executing a sym- 
bolic act. They recognized thereby that these dis- 
coloured witnesses of a dead past were the still living 
roots that nourished the feudal tree, and must be exter- 
minated before it could be destroyed. 

The historical sense is natural in all those who profit 
by respect for tradition; in others it is the artificial 
product of education and culture. There is good reason 
why the ruler exercising an authority created by the 
force of a strong ancestor, a nobility possessing riches, 
position, and power, originating In a more or less remote 
past, or the representatives of the numerous and varied 
interests that gather round a court and ruling class, 
should foster and glorify the recollection of their origin, 
and devote an honorable branch of every institution to 
the study of the past. It is to their advantage to do so, 
and they have the means to Impress their point of view 
upon the multitude, for whom tradition represents 
nothing but repression, humiliation, and injury. The 
ruling classes lay down the course of Instruction to be 
followed in schools, the conditions of examinations, and 
the oflficlal position of different branches of study; chairs 
are founded by them, the position and dignity of 
academies and learned societies depend on them; salaries 
are disbursed by them; the encouragement and endow- 
ment of research comes from them, and its results are 
rewarded by them with official positions, orders and 
decorations; and they have it thus entirely In their 



42 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

power to raise the knowledge of history to the most 
important place in general culture, and to give to the 
writing of it a specially high rank among intellectual 
and scientific activities. Moreover, the general estima- 
tion of the worth and importance of any branch of 
knowledge depends primarily, not upon its value as 
knowledge or its utility to the individual, but upon the 
repute in which it is held in the State and society — that 
is to say, among those who have the power and the 
deciding voice. 

Various intellectual elements compose this artificially 
fostered feeling for history. First there is the effect of 
the patronage of the ruling class. It is thought to be 
well-bred to Imitate their views. Then there Is the 
weakness of judgment which makes people Incapable of 
Independent or rational criticism, and the intellectual 
laziness which finds comfort in the generally accepted 
view. It follows from these characteristics of human 
thought that, although the majority may obtain no 
advantage from an institution — may even suffer from It 
— they will feel a respect for Its antiquity, and look upon 
its remote origin as sufliclent justification for its con- 
tinued existence. Moreover, the rebellious spirits of the 
present day, who have everything to gain by having 
things as they are, reality, weighed in the balance, com- 
pared and estimated: and everything to lose by the 
preference for, and exclusive consideration of, what is 
over and done with, what never really has been, what has 
been created by recollection — these men are actually 
proud of their historical sense, of caring more for what 
has been than for what is, more for the dead than the 
living, and would be ashamed of any deficiency in It. 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 43 

It is natural, since this point of view is of extraordinary 
utility to all those who have inherited privileges, that 
they should devote every effort to maintain the posses- 
sion of historical knowledge to be an advantage and a 
point of breeding, and declare that anyone who is with- 
out it must be incomplete, debased, possibly weak in in- 
tellect, and certainly a vulgarian. 

This is the practical significance of the preoccupation 
with the past, and the disproportionate value attached 
thereto. It would be one-sided, however, to refuse to 
recognize the strong attraction possessed by historical 
narrative from an sesthetic and general psychological 
point of view. Its stories are exciting and amusing. 
The imagination Is charmed and the slumbering mysti- 
cism inherent in the human mind agreeably stirred by a 
glimpse into the misty regions of the distant past. We 
long to draw aside the veil from what is partly hidden, 
to build up the ruins, to call up the spirits that are buried, 
and solve the riddles that clamour for solution. Poetic 
dreams are wakened in us by the mysterious faces that 
swim before us out of the dimness of the past. 

Finally, historic narrative has the charm of offering 
us the logical satisfaction of a clear and consistent ex- 
planation of many institutions, customs, and records that 
are incomprehensible in their existing form. Much that 
outrages the intelligence to-day, by its absurd and con- 
temptible injustice, is convincingly explained by the 
discovery of its origin and the fact that it then was 
rational, well founded, and, if not abstractedly just, at 
least suited to the conditions of the time. Written 
history is a zealous and eloquent counsel for the existing 
order, and secures acquittal or a judgment of extenuating 



44 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

circumstances for many a client that deserves condemna- 
tion. The advocate does not even imperil his success 
by the admission that his defence rests on the dangerous 
ground of incomplete Information as to fact, arbitrary 
Inventions, and uncritical Inferences of his own. All 
these causes explain the sedulous attention which all civ- 
ilized peoples devote to historical research and writing, 
In spite of the utter worthlessness of history as a guide 
to life, and the extremely small and uncertain informa- 
tion it can afford of the near, far less of the remote, past. 

I will now summarize the conclusions I hope to have 
established. 

History is not Identical with written history, and is 
only to a very small extent included within It. The 
claim of written history to be a science Is unfounded. 
It is not a descriptive science, since It is not certain of 
the facts which it claims to collect and establish,^ nor 
a pure science, since it knows nothing of the laws that 
govern the causal relations of the events of human life.^ 
It provides us with no knowledge. It does not assist 
the adaptation of the species to the conditions of life 
given by nature. It affords It no help In the struggle 
for existence. Moreover, it corresponds to no natural 
requirement of the human mind, except, perhaps, the 

* It does, of course, partly know the cruder, external facts: that 
battles were fought at Marathon, on the Catalonian plains, at 
Lutzen, and at Sadowa; that Cassar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon 
have lived, etc. ; but (P. Lacombe, op. cit., p. x) " what is the use of 
mere knowledge of bare facts? What use is it to us to know that 
... a Macedonian called Alexander . . . defeated the Persians at 
such and such a place . . . without deducing some truth or some 
feeling? " 

^ Georg Simmel {op. cit., p. 43) maintains that history delineates 
" scientifically " what has actually happened (it cannot do so, as 



HISTORY AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 45 

highly general desire for an illumination of the surround- 
ing darkness. This it can only satisfy formally, for the 
pictures that it throws upon the black background of 
the past are not aspects of reality, but projections of 
subjective ideas. The greatest events, even, are only for 
three generations a part of the living consciousness of 
posterity and those most intimately concerned in them. 
After that remembrance is only preserved in books, 
which are a dead-letter to the great majority; or, in the 
case of less civilized peoples, as the kernel of fantastic 
sagas, which are preserved by the tribe, not for their 
truth, but for their charm as fairy-tales. Nowadays re- 
membrance is probably not even preserved in this form. 
The impulse to the creation of folk-lore dies away as in- 
tellectual development progresses, and memory is less 
relied upon when the habit of trusting to the written 
word grows up. The high favour, nevertheless, still 
enjoyed by written history rests on the love of story- 
telling innate in mankind and the intense aesthetic delight 
felt in stories of human life, adventure tales, and anec- 
dotes, whether true or invented. The historical sense Is 
an artificial product of the ruling classes, who use it as a 
means for investing the existing order, which is advan- 
tageous to themselves alone, with a mystic and poetic 

I have shown), but does not need "to be carried to the point of 
establishing the laws governing historical events " ; but some 
pages farther on (p. 53) he contradicts himself by correctly stating, 
" There would be no history did we not see a meaning behind 
the external event, an intention behind the external deed, and a 
sensation behind the external definition ; interpretation alone gives it 
meaning." But the interpretation is arbitrary and purely subjective, 
the opposite of scientific; thus that which, even according to Simmel, 
gives rise to history (more correctly to written history) removes its 
claim to be a science. 



46 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

charm, for beautifying abuses by the glorification of their 
origin, and for casting a glamour of half-tender, half- 
reverential awe over institutions that have long lost any 
reasonable justification and become useless and meaning- 
less. Its practical purpose, in a word, is to oppress and 
deceive the present with the assistance of the past. 



CHAPTER II 

THE CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

It is only at a very early stage of human development 
that the desire for knowledge, so far as it exists at all, 
is confined to what previously existed; it is soon extended 
to the why and the how. Men are no longer satisfied 
with facts, more or less hidden, more or less credible; 
they demand to understand their causal connection. 
They fight against the conception of chance as the motive 
force in the universe, and strive to discover some deter- 
mining law of which it is the visible expression. Those 
who related the story of the past were conscious of this 
desire, and strove to satisfy it by passing from a naive 
chronicle of events to a pragmatic historical method, in 
which they developed one event from another, explained 
one by another, and described one as conditioned by 
another. From the examples already given in the pre- 
ceding section, whose number could easily be increased, 
it can be seen how arbitrary this connection and inter- 
pretation, as a matter of fact, was in almost every case, 
and to what extent it was dominated by the subjective 
feelings and opinions of the narrator. Human longing 
for knowledge was not arrested by the pragmatic 
method of historical description. It pretended to offer 
an explanation of isolated phenomena while neglecting 
altogether the notion of a universal story, of which the 
narration of the historian represents only a part. Long 

'47 



48 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

before the conception became definite it was dimly 
realized by men that all human existence is a unified 
process, in which the concrete events that are the subject 
of written history are but incidental features. They felt 
a keen desire to advance from arithmetic to algebra, 
from the action of one individual or group of individuals 
to a universal formula that should include the regular 
course of human action as a whole. Thus the transition 
was made from historical writing proper, the narration 
of events with a definite space and time, to the phi- 
losophy of history. 

We need not dig very deep to find the source of the 
philosophy of history. " Singly or collectively," as 
Lacombe ^ correctly observed, " it displeases us to be 
the sport of chance." In other words, we think causally, 
and our intellect cannot rest until it has assigned to 
every phenomenon that it perceives such a cause as 
seems adequate at the stage of knowledge which has been 
reached, and can without glaring contradiction be fitted 
into the current system of ideas and judgments. It is 
frequently maintained, and repeated without examina- 
tion, that the philosophy of history, both the word and 
the thing, originated with Voltaire.^ Baudrillart proved 
this to be an error.^ He proved that, two centuries 
before Voltaire, Jean Bodin consciously developed a 
philosophy of history. But he failed to notice, or at 
least to mention, that the " philosophy of history " was 

* P. Lacombe, op. fit., p. 23. 

'R. Rocholl, "The Philosophy of History: a critical account of the 
attempts to create it," Gottingen, 1878, p. 66. Rocholl gives Bagehot 
as his authority for " the appearance of the term in Voltaire (Paris 
edition of 1822)." 

'Baudrillart, "Jean Bodin et Son Temps," Paris, 1853. 



CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 49 

also first used by Bodin. He casually remarks that 
" Phllo the Jew might be called a philosophic his- 
torian." ^ 

The philosophy of history is an attempt to give a 
rational explanation of historical events. It endeavours 
to discover the law that regulates them, and to trace a 
meaning in its operation that introduces logical order 
into the events of the past, illuminates the present, and 
casts some light upon the future. There can be no 
worthier task for the human mind. But it has hitherto 
been attempted with most inadequate means and by most 
faulty methods. 

The philosophy of history must proceed from the 
assumption that history is governed by some law. Even 
chance would be such a law; but if chance had to be 
regarded as the law of history, its philosophy would end 
where it began. It could have nothing more to say 
were it once established that human affairs were gov- 
erned by blind unregulated accident. A round nought at 
the bottom would be all that could be made of such a 
sum. This is a conclusion which has not, so far, been 
reached by a philosopher of any standing. Every one 
has proceeded on the assumption that there must be 
some rational meaning in the life of man as displayed in 
his history, and devoted himself simply to discovering 
and expressing what that meaning is. Hardly one has 
thought it necessary to investigate the theoretical basis 
and justification of the assumption. 

^ I. Bodini, " Methodus ad f acilem historiarum cognitionem," Am- 
steeaedami, Sumptibus Joannis Ravesteiny, 1650, caput x. : " De his- 
toricorum ordine et collectione." P. 398: ". . . Philonis Judasi qui 
Philosophistoricus appellari potest. . . ." 



50 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

Nevertheless, the demand that history — that is to say, 
that human hfe — must possess a meaning intelligible to 
man is nothing more nor less than anthropomorphism. 
Self-observation teaches man that every conscious act of 
will is preceded by some thought and directed to some 
purpose. He cannot imagine a man's acting without 
this conscious exercise of will and purpose, unless he be 
drunk, sleep-walking, or mad. Generalizing, then, from 
his own subjective experience, he applies it to the realm 
of phenomena, from which it was not deduced, and to 
which it does not apply. Human life, looked at as a 
whole, seems to him to be continuous activity, and he 
seeks for its meaning as though it were, like an after- 
noon call or an Easter holiday, the outcome of human 
reflection and human will, and not the outcome of a 
combination of forces operating outside the sphere of 
human will and consciousness. He goes on in the same 
way to assimilate humanity to the individual, and to 
identify its becoming, being, and doing with that of the 
individual; and thinks that, just as he can say in the case 
of the action of a man, *' What does he mean by it? " he 
can say to the course of history as a whole, " What does 
humanity mean by it? " 

He does not notice what arbitrary and unproved 
assumptions are contained in this question. It premises 
that the events composing the fabric of history are ful- 
filled in accordance with a predetermined purpose. But 
purposive action is only conceivable as guided by an 
idea and a will conscious of that purpose and of reasons 
for pursuing it. In what consciousness is there developed 
the idea of a purpose governing the historical action 
of mankind and a will directing it to this purpose? 



CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 51 

Not in the consciousness of a man, for no man acts from 
any conscious purpose save the fulfillment of some im- 
mediate need, whether he be the greatest or the meanest : 
the conqueror who lays the world in ruins at his feet 
and builds it up anew, who leads his armies across three 
continents, murdering, harrying, and laying waste by 
fire and sword ; the discoverer, who binds a new force of 
nature to the service of mankind, and carries civilization 
a step further on its way; or the day labourer, whose 
activity provides for the satisfaction of his own wants 
and creates the material for his own support and that 
of the community as a whole. The connection between 
his action and the course of the total life of man, of 
which he is not conscious, determines it as little as do 
the distant consequences and remote effects of which 
he has no suspicion. Moreover, only a small portion of 
mankind were affected by the greatest deeds, whether 
of individual personalities or of nations, which history 
records, such as the destruction of the Persian Empire 
by Alexander the Great, the conquest of Gaul by Caesar, 
the establishment of Christianity among the Gentiles 
by the Apostle Paul, and the discovery of America by 
Columbus; the great majority have been entirely 
unaware of them at the time. If they have exer- 
cised any influence upon their destiny, it has been 
remote and secondary, and it is only by doing vio- 
lence by facts that a meaning can be sought or found 
in them relative to the course of human history as a 
whole. 

A developed idea of a rational purpose governing 
human affairs and a will directed to its fulfilment is not 
to be found in the consciousness of any actor. There 



52 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY , 

are historical personages who were in their time famed 
for their foresight, and who are known as the authors 
of far-reaching and comprehensive schemes and of 
political testaments. Henry IV. of France dreamed 
of a federated Europe, Richelieu made the fighting and 
weakening of the Hapsburgs the one object of French 
policy for a century and a half, and Frederick the Great 
left a wide range of advice to his successor. Had the 
idea of any object of political activity other than the 
direct advantage of their own country or dynasty en- 
tered the minds of these or any other men, they would 
have expressed it as they did their ideas of the line of 
policy to be pursued for the profit and aggrandizement 
of their realm. Had they done so, we should possess 
reliable information as to the lines and aims of human 
development, instead of being dependent on the in- 
genious suppositions and impudent assertions of philo- 
sophic historians, who, without any practical experience 
of action, are always able to give us precise information 
as to the motives which were unknown to the actors 
themselves. 

I think I have proved that the conception of a pur- 
pose governing the historical action of mankind is not 
present in the consciousness of the actors, nor the out- 
come of their will. To establish the existence in that 
action of a rational meaning and an aim, another con- 
sciousness must be postulated which knows the aim, 
conceives the purpose, and excites its will for its realiza- 
tion. Such a consciousness can only exist outside of 
humanity. It must be situated in a Mind that thinks, 
develops ideas, can exercise will, and uses men as the 
ploughman uses the oxen that draw his plough, without 



CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 53 

knowing why or to what end. But such a thinking and 
willing Mind above and beyond humanity would be God. 
Now, the philosophy of history could only rest upon a 
scientific basis had the course of history itself displayed 
such a conception of purpose at work as finds no place in 
the consciousness of man, and involves the assumption of 
God as consciously directing the unconscious action of 
mankind. But its actual procedure has been the exact 
opposite of this. The existence of God was from the 
beginning taken as proved, and as postulating the con- 
ception of a purpose in history; after this artifice the 
reality of the conception no longer requires to be proved 
by historical facts, since it can be referred back to God, 
whose existence has already been assumed. 

The problem involved in the question as to the mean- 
ing of human action was not at first apparent to the 
philosophic historian. It is like the flask that Loki 
cunningly set before Thor, and which he in vain tried to 
empty. He did not see that it was the ocean that he was 
trying to drain. Humanity is a portion of the universe. 
Its destiny is bound up with, and dependent on, the 
universal. There was a world before man; there will be 
a world after him. If human existence has a meaning, 
the existence of the universe must have a meaning too. 
The appearance and future disappearance of humanity 
is a trivial episode in the eternal origination and dis- 
appearance of the solar system and life-bearing planets. 
One episode in a process cannot have a meaning if the 
process Itself has none. If the warp and woof of the 
universe is a chaos of eternal forces, contending without 
aim or purpose visible to human reason, it is obviously 
vain to look for any rational aim or purpose in human 



54 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

existence, or in any life that comes into being for a 
moment when matter in the form of primary vapour 
thickens to form a heavenly body, lasts for a while, and 
is doomed to dissolution when matter passes from the 
heavenly body back to the condition of primary vapour. 
As a matter of fact, the philosophy of history undertakes 
to lift the veil that shrouds the great secret of the uni- 
verse, and tries to catch hold of it by the nearest corner 
— the one which covers the history of human life. Could 
it but succeed in demonstrating that the development of 
mankind upon the earth is directed towards a rational 
purpose, and prove the attainment of this purpose to lie 
along the line of the actual movements of mankind in 
the course of their history, it would thereby have reached 
a point from which a far further view of eternity could 
be gained. We could then proceed logically from the 
rational aim of human development to a rational pur- 
pose in the universe as a whole, and find a satisfactory 
answer to the question why energy is perpetually flashing 
across the universe ? why the heavenly bodies pursue an 
endless round of rising and setting? why life and con- 
sciousness arose in the cosmos? what is the meaning of 
the world? However the philosophy of history may 
appear to deduce the conception of purpose solely from 
the actions of man, it really undertakes the solution of 
the riddle of the universe, and its solution is the same as 
that with which mankind originally tried to satisfy their 
desire to know. Humanity silenced the earliest demands 
of its reason to comprehend natural phenomena by 
pleasing inventions, arrived at by means of the method 
of analogy. The world must be the work of an incon- 
ceivably clever and powerful artist, as implements of 



CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 55 

stone, weapons, clothes, and huts were the handiwork of 
clever men. Thunder and lightning, the roar of the 
winter storm, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, repre- 
sented the anger of some tremendous warrior, who 
threatened men with death and destruction, after the 
fashion of the enemies, animal and human, to whom 
they were accustomed. All primitive religion is to some 
extent the outcome of the need for assigning a rational 
meaning and comprehensive cause to the phenomena of 
the external world. Imagination steps in where certain 
information falls short. Until the human mind has 
learned to observe facts patiently, with an attention 
sternly disciplined, It will accept any convenient notion 
that happens to be presented to it. 

Before it arrives at testing its hypotheses by continual 
comparison with reality, experiences are arbitrarily 
combined and uncritically generalized Into stories. Any 
correction of these stories Is resisted as an Inconvenient 
disturbance of a comfortable habit of thought. The 
mythology which Invents gods In the likeness of men, 
In order to explain the world, introduces the conception 
of a rational purpose Into history in order to shield 
J mankind from the horror of Its Incomprehensibility. A 
philosophy of history which tries to Interpret history by 
means of preconceived opinions Is not a gamble, as 
Simmel ^ calls " metaphysical speculations about his- 
tory," but theology, as Trezza correctly observes.^ The 

^ Georg Siramel, " Problems of the Philosophy of History," Leipzig, 
1892, p. 105. 

^Trezza, quoted by R. Rocholl (op. cit., p. 229): "There has 
hitherto been no philosophy of history, for the theological method 
introducing a divine providence or a rule of law that is entirely for- 
eign has no claim to be such." 



56 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

assumption of Gods, or of a God, released men from that 
time forward from the necessity of searching further 
explanation. God is an answer to everything, a way out 
of every difficulty. The beginning of all things? God! 
The purpose of all existence ? The knowledge and wor- 
ship of God. The meaning of human life? A prepara- 
tion for the eternal service of God. The philosophy of 
history merely waves the torch of religion across the 
darkness that it pretends to light up. It decrees that the 
progress of history is directed by God. Human action 
has a purpose laid down by God. This purpose is the 
attainment of goodness, virtue, justice, and wisdom by 
means of the subjugation of evil. Nationalities are 
forms through which humanity must pass in a per- 
petually ascending scale of freedom and morality. This 
unctuous doctrine has been put forward in almost every 
philosophy of history up to the present day, in complete 
disregard of the innumerable facts that prove such 
dogmatism to be the most senseless twaddle. For one 
Lingard, who candidly admits that History represents 
the sorrows heaped upon all men by " the passions of 
the few," there are ten Bancrofts crying with uplifted 
eyes that " History is a divine power that cannot be 
falsified by human interpolations." William von Hum- 
boldt declares : " The historian must believe in the gov- 
ernance of the universe." Schelling sees in history as a 
whole " a continuous revelation of the Absolute grad- 
ually accomplishing itself." Krause confidently preaches 
that " History describes the temporal revelation of 
God," and the dominant idea of Bunsen's philosophy 
of history is sufficiently expressed in its title, " God in 
History." 



CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 57 

" Much the same way the preacher spoke, 
Only with slightly different phrases." — (Faust.) 

But the preacher assigns his wisdom to divine revela- 
tion, while the historians maintain that their view Is 
drawn from the facts of history. But their attitude to 
these facts, one and all of them ! They treat them as 
the gardener of a French park treats his box-hedges. 
They clip them, improve them, and alter them, until 
they assume the shape that they have determined upon 
from the beginning. They approach history with the 
preconceived notion that it declares the purposeful ruling 
of God, and overlooking or omitting whatever does not 
harmonize with, or absolutely contradict, this view, 
they arbitrarily and forcibly twist the rest Into the shape 
they want. 

The theologians are really the most honest In their 
procedure. They resort to faith without any beating 
about the bush, and so avoid the necessity of convincing 
the critical understanding. They set up their assertions, 
and triumphantly cast a verse from the Bible In the teeth 
of any heretic who ventures to dispute them. Anyone 
godless enough to question the authority of the Bible Is 
damned, and the most they can do Is to pray for the 
salvation of his soul. The first and most distinguished 
of this class of philosophic historians Is St. Augustine,' 
who, in his principal work, " De CIvitate Dei," under- 
took to discover and relate the meaning of all human 
history. There are two kingdoms, the divine and the 
earthly. " The kingdom of God is that whose citizens 
we long to be, with the love inspired In us by Its founder. 
The citizens of the earthly kingdom prefer their Idols to 



58 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

the founder of the heavenly kingdom." ^ The kingdom 
of God is that of the pious and true believers, the earthly- 
kingdom that of heathens and heretics. " Thus the two 
different kingdoms have been created by two different 
kinds of love : the earthly by the love of self rising to a 
contempt of God, the heavenly by a love of God rising 
to contempt of self." ^ "We have no assurance that 
mankind was at the time of Arphaxates removed from 
the worship of the true God, but the kingdom or society 
of the impious may be dated from the impiously arrogant 
attempt to build a tower reaching to Heaven." ^ "A 
premonition of the kingdom of God may be noted . . . 
at the time of the patriarch Abraham, after which it 
becomes more pronounced." * The kingdom of God 
was fully revealed to man at the coming of Jesus Christ. 
Since His mortal pilgrimage, the earthly kingdom, 
which serves Satan, the fallen angel who rose in rebellion 
against God, has fought obstinately, but with ever- 
weakening strength, against the kingdom of God, which 
will at the end of time finally conquer the earthly king- 
dom ; the number of the saints determined by God will 
be fulfilled, and after the elimination of evil from the 
earth, mankind will be admitted to full communion with 
God. The life of humanity upon earth lasts seven of 
God's days of a thousand years each. The first day lasts 
from the creation of Adam to the Flood, the second from 
the Flood to Abraham, the third from Abraham to 
David, the fourth from David to the Babylonian cap- 
tivity of the Jews, the fifth from the Babylonian captivity 
to the Advent of Christ. Since Christ mankind has been 

^ " De Civitate Dei," xi. i. " Ibid., xiv. 28. 

^ Ibid., xvi. 10. * Ibid., xvi. 12. 



CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 59 

living in the sixth day. At the close of the sixth day the 
Last Judgment and the Resurrection will take place, and 
the seventh day will begin God's day of rest — the Sab- 
bath that has no end/ St. Augustine's chronology is 
not perfectly exact. The third day does not include a 
full thousand years, but only fourteen generations, which 
became much shorter after the time of the patriarchs 
than they were from Adam down to the Flood, and in 
the time of Abraham. St. Augustine is also careful to 
remark that he cannot answer for the duration of the 
sixth day. He wished to avoid the possibility that six 
hundred years hence^ — he wrote his book on the King- 
dom of God in a.d. 400 — his calculations might be falsi- 
fied by the non-arrival of the Last Judgment. The sixth 
day is " nullo generationum numero metienda " — not 
measurable by any number of generations — because it 
stands in Holy Writ; " non est vestrum scire tempora 
quae pater posuit in sua potestate " — " it is not yours to 
know the things which are in the hand of the Father." 
This did not prevent Christianity in A.D. 1000 from ex- 
pecting the end of the world, the termination of the sixth 
day, and beginning of the Sabbath according to St. Au- 
gustine. But when the awful day, expected with mortal 
fears, passed by without anything remarkable happening, 
the reputation of the prophets who had followed Au- 
gustine in dating the Sabbath for the year 1000 did not 
suffer at all. Real faith is not perturbed by facts that 
prove to be ridiculous — it passes them by or interprets 
them in some other way. 

The plan of the philosophy of history of the Bishop 
of Hippo places it outside the reach of rational criticism. 

^ " De Civitate Dei," xxii. 30. 



6o THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

One can hardly Investigate seriously such dogmatic 
assertions as those concerning the revolt of Satan against 
God, the seven days of the world, and the Resurrection 
and Last Judgment on the eve of the seventh day. St. 
Augustine records the pious fairy-tale of his own inven- 
tion with fervour, and does not trouble at all about its 
truth. His sole source is the Bible. He accepts every 
word literally. He regards Adam, his sons and de- 
scendants, Noah and Abraham, as historical personages. 
He believes in Methusaleh's 969 years. His mode of 
thought and his logic may be estimated from passages 
like the following: " Of all visible things, the greatest is 
the world: of invisible, the greatest is God. That the 
world is, we see; that God is, we believe. Our belief 
that God made the world rests on the testimony of no 
less a witness than God Himself. Where have we heard 
Him? In no less place than Holy Writ, where His 
prophet has said, ' In the beginning God made the 
Heaven and the Earth.' " ^ 

For him a verse in the Bible is proof of the existence 
of God, and a sufficient explanation of the origin of the 
universe. The only ancient history that has any value 
or existence for him is the history of the Jewish people. 
He turns away from the past of all the rest of mankind 
with perfect indifference. The account of Christ in 
the Gospels is for him strict historical truth. The 
coming of Christ, of which the greatest peoples of the 
earth knew nothing, and which seemed to the majority 
of his own contemporaries, living in the scene of His 
activity, an event so unimportant that it Is not recorded 
by one impartial contemporary witness — this is to him 

^ " De Civitate Dei," xi. 4. 



CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 6i 

the greatest event in history, and its sole essential con- 
tent. The growth and decay of nations, the rise and fall 
of kingdoms, the struggle in the community for power 
and dominion, the rise and modifications of public institu- 
tions, are to him matters of complete indifference, except 
in so far as they can be connected with the ostensible 
preparations for, and spread of, Christianity, its battles 
and its victories. What are race-migrations, wars, or 
revolutions ? Why linger over them ? why inquire as to 
their origin and development? why seek for a law gov- 
erning their progress ? All that has no significance. On 
the one side are the faithful who believe in Jesus, on the 
other the servants of the devil, who will know naught of 
Him. Between the two camps there is irreconcilable 
enmity, until in the fulness of time there comes the Last 
Judgment, and all history is brought to its sacred con- 
clusion with the triumph of the kingdom of God over 
Satan and his crew. 

Such is the philosophy of history as expounded by 
St. Augustine. It is a supplement to the Bible and the 
Catechism. It is based upon revelation, and scorns 
earthly proofs. It has nothing to do with reason. Any- 
one who doubts or denies is a heretic, deserves only the 
treatment the Church reserves for such. It is under- 
standable that the Middle Ages should have reverently 
followed in the steps of the Bishop of Hippo, and built 
up their history upon his interpretation. It is less com- 
prehensible that he should have pointed out the way 
which the philosophy of history has followed down to 
recent times. Bossuet was a Bishop of the Roman 
Church, so it need excite no surprise to find him occupy- 
ing quite the same point of view as his African brother. 



62 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

He, too, divides history into seven epochs, though he 
assigns their limits somewhat differently. With the 
Bishop of Meaux, the third period extends down to 
Moses, the fourth to Solomon and the building of the 
first temple, the fifth to the return of the Jews from 
Babylon, the sixth to the birth of Jesus, and the seventh 
down to the last day. The two first parts of his " Dis- 
cours sur I'Histoire Universelle " are devoted to the peo- 
ple of Israel, with a few casual remarks on the peoples 
with whom they came in contact, and by whom their 
destinies were influenced. We have to wait for the third 
and shortest section for any fuller treatment of the 
Asiatic world powers, of the classical nations, and of 
Western Europe generally, down to the time of Charle- 
magne; but Bossuet justifies this to his own satisfaction 
by saying: " These kingdoms have for the most part a 
necessary connection with God's chosen people. God 
made use of the Assyrians and Babylonians to chastise 
His people, of the Persians to restore it, of Alexander 
and his immediate successors to protect it, of Antiochus 
Epiphanes and his successors to test it, of the Romans to 
maintain it in freedom against the Syrian kings, bent 
only on its destruction. The Jews remained under the 
power of these same Romans down to the time of Jesus 
Christ. When they denied and crucified Him, divine 
vengeance used the unconscious Romans as the instru- 
ment for the extermination of the thankless race. Hav- 
ing resolved at a certain time to gather all peoples 
together into a new community, God joined land and sea 
under the sway of this empire. One of the most power- 
ful instruments of Providence for the free spread of the 
Gospel was the intercourse thus afforded between the 



CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 63 

many different peoples, who ceased to be strangers to one 
another when they were brought together under the do- 
minion of Rome." ^ 

The blind faith of the Middle Ages makes it little 
astonishing that the medieval historians — Ekkehard, 
Bede, Isidor of Seville — accepted, as did Bossuet, the 
seven epochs of St. Augustine, and the four world 
powers of the prophet Daniel. It is, however, amazing 
to find Bossuet's views expounded with solemn earnest- 
ness down to recent times. Johannes von Miiller de- 
clares with an assurance that admits of no doubts, 
" Jesus Christ is the key to the history of the universe." 
Schelling says almost in the same words : " Christianity 
is the centre and key of all history." Fichte is, as usual, 
rather nebulous and mystical, but if his pronouncement 
at the close of his " Characteristics of the Present Age " 
be correctly interpreted, he anticipates as the end of 
history the realization of the Christianity of the Gospel 
according to St. John, the kingdom of heaven upon 
earth, a spiritual kingdom of love. Unlike the clerical 
historians, he never cites the Bible; his knowledge is 
wholly drawn from the depths of his own inner con- 
sciousness. " The philosopher who concerns himself, as 
a philosopher, with history follows up the a priori clue 
to the cause of the world, which is clear to him apart 
from history. His conclusions are already established 
prior to and independent of history, which is to him use- 
less as a method of proof." ^ A philosophy of history 

^ Bossuet, " Discours sur I'Histoire Universelle a Monseigneur le 
Dauphin," part iii., chap. i. 

° J. S. Fichte, " The Characteristics of the Present Age," col- 
lecteci works, edited by J. H. Fichte, Berlin, 1846, vol. vii,, p. 139. 



64 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

which can unerringly establish the object and meaning of 
history without studying it is indeed the chef d'oeiivre of 
intellectual gymnastics. 

Of course, a juggler who is clever in the use of dia- 
lectic, and unscrupulous enough to combine, without 
criticism, events that are glaringly discrepant, can readily 
draw a historical picture in which every event refers back 
to Jesus and depends upon Christianity. But by the 
same inventive sophistry it could be proved that the 
course of universal history up to 1492 was only a prepa- 
ration for the discovery of America, which has deter- 
mined its course ever since; or, to push the joke a little 
further, to find the meaning of history and its obvious 
aim in the invention of the game of Skat, with the Per- 
sian War, the destruction of the Roman Empire, the 
dissolution of the Spanish world-monarchy, the Thirty 
Years' War, the French Revolution, and the campaign 
of 1870 as its preliminary stages. The whole course of 
history can in this fashion be referred to any event what- 
soever, only provided that events are arranged and 
selected accordingly, some being omitted and an unreal 
importance assigned to others. 

Voltaire ^ ridicules Bossuet's conception of history, yet 
his " Discours sur I'Histoire Universelle " is used to this 
day as a textbook in higher-grade schools in France. 
Robert Flint, author of the best general account of the 
literature on the philosophy of history of the principal 
European nations, enters a wise caution against the 
views of St. Augustine, Orosius, Bossuet, and their 
disciples, whose " assertion of the existence, power, and 

^ Voltaire, " Essai' sur les Moeurs et I'Esprit des Nations, CEuvres 
Completes," Paris, 1853, chap, iii., p. 73, § i. 



CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 65 

wisdom of the First Providential Cause ... is not sup- 
ported by adequate proof." But a few lines further on 
he is guilty of the same dogmatism himself: "The 
ultimate and greatest triumph of historical philosophy 
will really be neither more nor less than the full proof 
of Providence, the discovery by the processes of scientific 
method of a divine plan which unifies and harmonizes 
the apparent chaos of human actions contained in history 
in a cosmos." ^ There could be no more ingenuous con- 
fession of the old deductive, aphoristic mode of thought. 
The genuine seeker after truth and knowledge must 
approach facts without preconceived opinions about 
them. If human destiny seems chaotic, he must sadly 
admit that he sees it as chaos, and can discover in it 
neither order nor meaning. Flint does not do so. He 
starts with the conviction that history must evidence a 
Providence and divine plan. Whence does he obtain 
this conviction? Not from history — history appears to 
him a chaos — but from the arbitrary invention of his 
own fancy, from his own wishes and desires. He ap- 
proaches history with a subjective conviction already 
formed. What he sees directly contradicts his convic- 
tion. He sees no plan, no Providence; only a chaos. 
Far from bowing before the truth and abandoning the 
conviction that Is falsified by the testimony of his eyes, 
he clings to It, and confidently expects that facts will 
accommodate themselves to It! All honour, then, to 
the courageous consistency of a Fichte who proudly de- 
clares that his opinion of history was formed with- 
out so much as a glance at It, and that the cursed 

^ Robert Flint, " The Philosophy of History in France and Ger- 
many," Edinburgh and London, 1874, p. 23. 



66 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

facts have got to conform to his opinion as best they 
may! 

There Is one most serious difficulty In the way of those 
whowlshto see history directed by a divine plan through- 
out, and echoing the praises of the all-wisdom and good- 
ness of God: or to regard It, with Schelling,^ as a " rev- 
elation of God," or " an epic composed in the mind of 
God " : a difficulty that has Involved many of them in 
most fearful confusion — namely, the presence of evil In 
the world. There is no denying it. It is far too glaring 
for that. History displays an unbroken succession of 
wars and conquests, tyranny and risings against it, 
deceit and treachery crowned by success and triumphant 
over persecuted virtue, and might victorious over right. 
Is all this to be regarded as the direct will of a moral 
order governing the world? Can it be the hand of a 
loving God that purposely heaps these horrors upon 
man? To explain suffering as, on the one hand, a pun- 
ishment for the sins of men, and, on the other, as a 
salutary discipline ordained by Providence to test and 
purge them, so that they may be worthy of the eternal 
grace of God, may satisfy a superficial philosopher. 
More profound thinkers cannot dismiss the question so 
easily. Leibnitz required the many volumes of his 
" Theodicy " to prove that all is arranged for the best In 
this best of all possible worlds, and that all the phe- 

^ Fr. W. J. V. Schelling, " Collected Works," Stuttgart and Augs- 
burg, i860, vol. vi., p. 57: "History is an epic composed in the 
mind of God: its two principal parts relate the departure of 
humanity from its Centre to the furthest point of distance, and their 
return. The one part is the ' Iliad,' the latter the ' Odyssey ' of his- 
tory. . . . Thus is the great purpose of the universe expressed in 
history." 



CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 67 

nomena of the universe fit into a place ordained by God. 
That no one has hitherto noted the colossal humour of 
the " Theodicy " Is the strongest possible proof of the 
extraordinary rarity of a sense of the ridiculous. In 
" Candlde " Voltaire Is certainly Inimitably witty at the 
expense of Leibnitz's optimism; but even he hardly 
seems to feel the absurdity of a mortal's feeling obliged 
to hold the brief for God, and expend the greatest pains 
and all the resources of his professional skill In order to 
acquit his client of the charges brought against him, or, 
at least, to obtain a verdict of extenuating circum- 
stances. 

Rocholl ^ divides philosophic historians Into the 
" theological," who see In history the handiwork of God; 
the " humanistic," who regard It as the work of man; 
and the " naturalistic-materialistic," who regard It as 
the work of nature. I will devote no more time to the 
theologians. They explain the course of history by the 
ordinance and Providence of God, who created the earth 
and mankind, and Is directing them by wondrous hidden 
ways to a predetermined goal. For proofs of this 
fantastic product of their own brains they point to the 
Bible. They no longer look to It for their cosmogony, 
or uphold the story of the Creation In Genesis against 
the conclusions of science ; but they still seek the key to 
history In the Bible, and look at human life as the 
medieval scholastics looked at nature. Like them, igno- 
rant. Wind, and arbitrary in their interpretation of the 
facts, which they are unable or unwilling to observe, they 
intentionally close their eyes to everything that contra- 
dicts their assertions. 

^ R. Rocholl, op. cit., p. i. 



68 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

The desire for objective conclusions rather than sub- 
jective eloquence finds little more satisfaction among 
those whom Rocholl calls the humanists. There Is no 
fundamental difference between them and the theo- 
logians, for they too assume the existence of a world 
ordinance and Providence without bringing forward a 
single proof in support of their assertion that could stand 
before unprejudiced criticism. 

The reputation of Giambattista VIco, who is com- 
monly regarded as the first philosophic historian who 
was not a theologian, stands especially high. Goethe, 
Johannes Miiller, and Fr. A. Wolf had a high opinion 
of him. In his Preface to Hegel's " Philosophy of His- 
tory," Edward Gans ^ says : " There are only four truly 
philosophic historians — VIco, Herder, Fr. v. Schlegel, 
and Hegel," VIco, the earliest " truly philosophic his- 
torian," did, as a matter of fact, regard himself as a dis- 
coverer, for he calls his book " A New Science of the 
Common Nature of Nations," ^ and claims to expound 
the principles of this science. These principles are as 
follows: " Belief in a divine Providence, the moderation 
of the passions by the institution of marriage, and the 
doctrine of the immortality of the soul consecrated by 
the use of burial." ^ History cannot teach faith In the 
divine Providence. Where was this Providence when 
Greece was given over to the plunder of the rude 

^ G. Wilh. Friedr. Hegel's Works, complete edition, edited by a 
band of friends of the deceased, vol. ix., " Lectures on the Philosophy 
of. History," edited by Dr. Edward Gans, Berlin, 1837, Preface, p. x. 

* " Cinque libri di Giambattista Vico de' principj d' una scienza 
nuova d' intomo alia natura delle nazioni," second impression, Naples, 
1730. 

* Vico, op. cit., p. 182. 



CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 69 

Romans, when ancient civilization was blotted out by the 
race migrations, when the Anglo-Saxon England of 
Harold was handed over to the Norman freebooters, 
when Europe was laid waste by the Mongolian Genghis 
Khans and by the Black Death? How did it permit 
Alba to carry out what he did in the Netherlands, permit 
Henry IV. to be murdered by Ravaillac, allow the Thirty 
Years' War to ravage Germany, and take sides with op- 
pression against freedom in 1849? Such a list can be 
almost indefinitely extended. If there be a Providence 
at work in these cases, its actions are not governed by 
what mortal men understand as justice or morality. It is 
no proof of the immortality of the soul that savages be- 
lieved In It, and therefore ceremoniously interred their 
dead. As for the second principle — the " moderation of 
the passions by the Institution of marriage " — it has 
nothing to do with the philosophy of history, for It 
throws no light on any historical event. Moreover, it is 
false. Marriage did not arise and develop with the ob- 
ject of " moderating the passions." It was a social insti- 
tution, devised to strengthen the family and insure the 
Inheritance of property by the heirs of him who had ac- 
quired It. Its origin lies In the economic conditions of 
the law of property, and is neither physiological nor 
moral. Throughout the course of history there is only 
one instance of marriage as a political question. In 
Rome full legal marriage — confarreatio — was reserved 
originally to the patricians, and could not be entered Into 
by a plebeian. The plebeians fought long and bitterly to 
be admitted to the full marriage rite. But they did so 
not " to moderate the passions," but because the right of 
inheritance was confined to the children of such a mar- 



70 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

rlage. The plebeians, in fact, sought through con- 
farreatio for that full right of inheritance that the pa- 
tricians reserved to themselves. The question was thus 
one episode in the century-long struggle for supremacy 
between the orders; it reappears nowhere else. To re- 
gard it as a determining factor in universal history, as 
Vico does, is absurd. 

Even his famous conception of the ricorsi,^ the 
continued recurrence of human events, is really very 
limited, and founded on an extraordinarily restricted 
basis of fact. For the origin of his view he produces 
only one fact: the similarity between the origin and de- 
velopment of the medieval feudal systems and the foun- 
dation of Rome. Even were the comparison of the two 
phenomena a just one, which is far from being the case, 
such a single instance of the occurrence of parallel de- 
velopment would be far from justifying the predication 
of a universal law of the " recurrence of human events." 
There is something far more impressive in the old Greek 
theory of the eternal cycles encompassing the whole 
universe. Vico's little ricorsi are but parodies of the 
cycles of Empedocles, Zeno, and Aristotle. 

Vico's book teems with eccentricities. He divides 
history into three periods — ^the divine, the heroic, and 
the human. In the first period the earth was inhabited 
by mighty giants, still in direct relation to God. In the 
second the heroes ruled, whose exploits are recorded in 
folk-lore and to whom the nobility traces back Its 
descent. Humanity is at present in the third stage. Yet 
this fairy-tale has had considerable effect. Augusta 

^ Vico, op. cit., book v., " Del ricorso delle cose uraane," pp. 428 
et seq. 



CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 71 

Comte's three phases of development — theological, 
metaphysical, and positive — were undoubtedly sug- 
gested by Vice's three periods. And the twaddle of 
Gobineau about the heroes, sons of kings, who are called 
to lead the populace is but an echo of Vico's description 
of the heroes of the second period. 

As Werner ^ correctly observed, VIco did, as a matter 
of fact, " like Bossuet, emphasize the providential 
guidance of history and the fundamental importance of 
the religious element in it." In other words, he is 
orthodox, like Bossuet and St. Augustine, and drags 
into history the improved theological assumptions of a 
divine ordinance of the world and predetermined goal 
of human development. 

He puts his doctrine in a nutshell when, at the close 
of his " New Science," he remarks " that God rules men 
and reveals His true light to mortals in flashes." This 
idea that the action of men is ordered by God, of whose 
will they are but the unconscious instruments, is repeated 
by Kant in his " Idea of a Universal History from the 
International Point of View." He says, in the Intro- 
duction, that since " death, birth, and marriage appear 
to be governed by calculable laws, individuals and na- 
tions, while imagining themselves to be following their 
own opposing purposes, are really, without being aware 
of it, under the guidance of a great natural design." 
What a logical summerset ! If we are to look for design 
and will in every regular phenomenon, the ebb and flow 
of the sea, which appear " to be governed by calculable 

^ Professor Karl Werner, " On Giambattista Vico as a philosophic 
Historian and Founder of the New Italian Philosophy," Vienna, 
1877, p. 22. 



72 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

laws," must be obeying a design foreign to themselves. 
Such obviously is not the scientific view of tides. 

Edward Gans' second " truly philosophic historian " is 
Herder. His *' Idea of a Philosophy of Human His- 
tory " was greatly admired on its appearance, regarded 
at the close of the eighteenth century as a textbook of 
the subject, and respectfully quoted to this day. It is, 
however, hardly readable now, as much on account of its 
form as its subject. It is written in an ornate and florid 
style. Turgid declamation is varied by rhetorical invo- 
cation of the subject in hand — " Fare ye well, ye wild 
regions beyond the mountains ... it is under another 
aspect that we shall see most of you again. . . ." 
" Tone on, mystic harp of Ossian; fortunate the man in 
any age who obeys thy soft tones." " I bow reverently 
before thy lofty form, thou head and founder of an 
empire based on such noble aims," etc. His point of 
view is that of a childlike theology. Everything that 
meets his eye must have a rational, human purpose. 
Everything betrays the wise design of an omnipotent 
Creator. Man is created upright, in order " to direct 
his thoughts and wishes towards heaven." ^ Apes have 
been denied the gift of speech, because they would have 
misused it, " Speech would be dishonoured in the 
mouth of the coarse, sensual, brutal monkey, who would 
undoubtedly ape human utterance with half the intelli- 
gence of man. A horrible mingle of human tones and 
monkey thoughts — no ! human speech could not be so 
degraded. Thus the monkey was made dumb, more 

^ Johann Gottfried von Herder, " Idea of a Philosophy of Human 
History," Introduction by Heinrich Luden, Leipzig, 1812, vol. i., 
p. 120. 



CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 73 

dumb than any other animal." ^ " The sole effect of the 
cold on him (the inhabitant of the North Polar regions) 
was to bow his body and constrict the circulation of his 
blood. . . . But his vital forces, working from within 
outwards, built him up for warmth, toughness, and com- 
pactness, rather than for height. . . . His hair re- 
mained stiff and straggling, since his sap was not con- 
stituted to grow soft, silky hair." ^ Such pearls occur on 
almost every page. Herder constantly reminds one of 
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, who said of the melon, in his 
" Harmonies de la Nature " : " It is externally divided 
into sections, because Nature intended it for family eat- 
ing! " In his " Democritus," Weber introduces a ribald 
German, who humorously parodies the easy way in 
which the pious explain phenomena by saying: "How 
wise of Providence to have made holes In the cat's fur 
just where the eyes are ! " 

Herder sees a purpose In history, and expresses It 
briefly and concisely: " The purpose of human nature Is 
humanity." ^ This revelation recalls the profound 
economic explanation which Fritz Renter makes his 
inspector Braslg give for the poverty of the country- 
people : " The people's poverty Is due to their necessitous 
state." " The purpose of human nature is humanity." 
What, then. Is humanity? Herder does not omit to 
answer the question : " Humanity is reason and reason- 
ableness In all classes and all human affairs." * Now we 
know. Alexander conquered the Persian Empire, Rome 
subdued the known world beneath Its yoke. Western 
Christendom Instituted the Crusades, Spain colonized 

^Herder, op. cit., vol. i., p. 132. ^ Ibid., p. 198. 

' Ibid., vol. il., p. 320. * Ibid., p. 243. 



74 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

South and Europe North America, Napoleon made the 
last first all over Europe, in order that " reason and 
reasonableness might prevail in all classes, in all affairs." 
Herder hastens to snub anyone who doubts *' that a de- 
sign of this kind can be the sole purpose of Providence 
for our race. The fact is self-evident." ^ Only a per- 
verted mind can doubt a fact that is " self-evident." 

The whole book is a welter of words without the 
smallest kernel of meaning. A few examples will suffice 
of his constant concatenations of words that appear to be 
full of deep meaning, and really express nothing at all 
when one looks into them : " The more the muscular 
energies enter the domain of the nerves they are cap- 
tured by the organization, and compelled to serve the 
purposes of sensibihty." ^ " The genetic force is the 
mother of everything upon the earth; climate can only 
assist or hinder it." ^ " Nature has expended all her 
store of human types upon the earth, in order that she 
might deceive mortals throughout their lives by pro- 
viding for each his own delight at his own time and at 
his own place." * " Epochs are linked together by virtue 
of their own nature." ^ Herder does not explain a 
single historical event. He orders and describes them 
one after another, and thus preserves an appearance of 
logical consequence. It would be impossible to under- 
stand how such a mass of arbitrary and often senseless 
propositions, and a kind of florid fine writing that is 
particularly Intolerable In what purports to be a scientific 
book, could ever have been taken seriously, if it were 
not to some extent explained In Book XVII. In that 

^ Herder, op. cit., vol. ii., p. 302. " Ibid., vol. i., p. 81. 

" Ibid., p. 265. * Ibid., p. 335. ° Ibid., vol. ii., p. 249. 



CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 75 

book Herder speaks of the origin of Christianity, the 
nature of Christ and of His doctrines, with the intel- 
lectual freedom of a rationalistic child of the age of 
enlightenment. Such outspokenness on the part of an 
official naturally made a profound impression on the 
cultivated classes in Germany, who were for the most 
part still confined within the limits of a narrow ortho- 
doxy that looked askance upon the Christianity of Rous- 
seau's Savoyard Vicar. But to designate Herder's 
*' Ideas " as a philosophy of history is an irritating de- 
ception. 

Edward Gans' third " truly philosophic historian," 
Friedrich von Schlegel, need not detain us. Many dec- 
ades have now elapsed since any sensible man troubled 
about the dismal twaddle of that reactionary fanatic. 
But the fourth, Hegel, cannot be so readily dismissed, 
since his influence has not yet completely disappeared. 
Barth, who is not on the whole a Hegelian, says in his 
Preface to Hegel's " Philosophy of History " : " How- 
ever deservedly and completely Hegel's logic and 
Natural Philosophy may be forgotten, certain elements 
in his general intellectual position, which are practically 
developed in his ' Philosophy of History,' do still 
stoutly hold their ground, not only in Germany, but also 
in England, America, Italy, and even France." ^ Ed- 
ward von Hartmann declares that " Hegel's philosophy 
of history has not yet been superseded," and says that he 
regards " the ' Philosophy of History ' as Hegel's most 
permanently valuable contribution." Hermann was a 
pupil and disciple of Hegel's, without any individuality 

^ Barth, " The Philosophy of History of Hegel and the Hegelians 
down to Marx and Hartmann: a Critical Study," Leipzig, 1890. 



76 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

of his own ; it is therefore small matter for surprise that 
he eulogizes him in terms of absurd exaggeration, calls 
him the " founder of a systematic philosophy of his- 
tory," and his theory " the only one worth consider- 
ing." ^ In the same way, when Arnold Ruge calls Hegel 
" the greatest and freest intellect of our time," ^ one has 
to remember that Hegel was his master. But even Flint, 
who had no personal relations with Hegel, and who has 
criticized him, though very sparingly, declares: " It is 
quite impossible to deny him an extraordinary wealth of 
thought of the most profound and delightful kind." ^ 

Let us examine one or two of the profound and de- 
lightful thoughts which find a place in the " Philosophy 
of History." Hegel's philosophy of history rests upon 
a single postulate : " The contribution of philosophy is 
solely . . . the simple thought of reason, reason as 
governing the world, the world process as a rational 
process. . . . That reason is revealed in the world, and 
nothing else is there revealed except it, its honour and 
its glory — this is what has been proved ... by philos- 
ophy, and may here be assumed as proved." * Nothing 
could, in fact, be more convenient. Hegel's sole postu- 
late is that history is a rational process. But this 
postulate is, in fact, precisely the thema probandum; if 
we are ready to postulate it, to take it as proved, we need 
no philosophy of history. But let us follow Hegel a step 

^ Hermann, " Philosophy of History," Leipzig, 1870. 

" Henry Thomas Buckle's " History of Civilization in England," 
German translation by Arnold Ruge, fourth authorized edition, 
Leipzig and Heidelberg, 1871, vol. i., p. xiv. 

" Robert Flint, " The Philosophy of History in France and Ger- 
many," Edinburgh and London, 1874, P- 496- 

* Hegel, op. cit., p. 13. 



CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 77 

farther. History is understood " as the impulse of the 
spirit to find the Absolute — that is to say, itself." Thus, 
Hegel knows there is a spirit ; and it has obviously lost 
itself. We are not told where and when this rather 
incomprehensible misfortune took place. But, anyhow, 
the poor spirit then felt a very natural impulse to find 
itself. Through this impulse it created the history of 
the world, in the course of which it happily did find 
itself. The process is not very clear, but the result is 
satisfactory. And empty nonsense like this passed, and 
frequently still passes, for profundity ! The goal of his- 
tory Is freedom. " The his tory of the world is sim ply 
the development of Hie conception of freedom." This 
looks promising. But Hegel hastens to add : " Objective 
freedom involves the subjection of the accidental will, 
which has only a formal existence." ^ What does all 
this amount to practically? A man wills something: for 
example, to start a school where there shall be no reli- 
gious teaching. He imagines that freedom consists in 
being able to carry out his will. Hegel shows him his 
mistake. His will has only a formal existence (this 
statement has no meaning, though it makes one stop 
and think) ; it is accidental ; he must give it up ; the police 
will prevent his opening a free-thinking school, and that 
will be real objective freedom. 

And the details of Hegel's " Philosophy of History " 
are equally remarkable. It ought all to be quoted, for 
there are pearls on every page. " Europe represents 
finality in the history of the world." ^ Let us hope that 
America will take no offence at hearing this: " America 
has shown, and does still show, a complete lack of 

' Hegel, op. cit., p. 446. ' Ibid., p. 102. 



78 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

physical and Intellectual power." ^ *' The subjection of 
the Asiatic kingdoms to the European is inevitable." * 
This judgment will no doubt convince the Japanese of 
the great significance of the Hegelian philosophy, 
" The advantages of connecting the Mediterranean with 
the Arabian Gulf and the Pacific are less than might 
have been believed, since the difficulties of navigation in 
the Red Sea are aggravated by the prevalent north wind, 
which renders it impossible to sail from south to north 
In all save three months of the year." ^ Lesseps, how- 
ever, was not a Hegelian, and he did not do so badly 
with his Suez Canal. " Greek life Is essentially youth- 
ful, and was begun by one youth, concluded by an- 
other. ... It started with Achilles, the embodiment of 
poetic youth, and was brought to a close by Alexander, 
youth in Its reality." * This is very subtle, but softly — 
did Greek life really begin with Achilles, and did It not 
go on for at least a century and a half after Alexander 
the Great? And since Romulus was a youth, and Rom- 
ulus Augustulus another, was not Roman life also 
begun by one youth and ended by another? And is not 
the whole Hegelian phrase, for all its pretentiousness, 
devoid of real meaning and value? "This principle 
(Christ) is the pivot upon which the world rotates. 
From It history starts and to It returns. God is subject. 
Creator of Heaven and Earth, yet It Is not In this power 
that revelation consists, but In the Sonship by which He 
has differentiated His own personality. Spirit exists 
only in so far as it Is conscious of an object, and of itself 
as object. Thus that Other which God sets outside of 

* Hegel, op. cit., p. 77. * Ibid., p. 147. 

' Ihid., p. 210. *Ibid., p. 232. 



CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 79 

Himself Is Himself; and in His contemplation of Him- 
self as Other, love and spirit exist. We are aware of 
God as spirit when we are aware of Him as Three in 
One, and it is from this principle that the history of the 
world has developed." ^ And this Is what is put forward 
as the philosophy of history — these ravings that might 
have fallen from the lips of a delirious monk whose 
brain was fevered by the writings of the Dominicans. 
Hegel is indeed one of the most appalling figures in the 
intellectual history of the human race. Not on his own 
account — there have always been cobweb weavers, and 
many of them have wrapped their threadbare thought 
in a magnificent diction of their own Invention — but 
because of his Influence on his contemporaries. One Is 
almost impelled to believe that the faculty of judgment 
either does not exist In man, or is never used by him, 
when one realizes, after reading the works of Hegel, 
that this oracular utterance of a tissue of unmeaning 
phantasies, this ignorant jugglery with unreal and arbi- 
trary words, called concepts, was received, not only by 
Germany, but by the world at large, as a revelation of 
the most profound wisdom; finds, too, the Hegelian 
dialectic, with its arid and valueless formulae of thesis, 
antithesis, and synthesis, accepted by a whole generation 
as a law of thought,^ and Hegel still regarded as a great 
thinker, and named with pride by the German people. 
The Incapacity of the vast majority of mankind to apply 

* Hegel, op. cit., p. 330. 

' Krause could say, in Hegelian style, " The old world is the 
thesis, the new world the antithesis, and Polynesia the synthesis," 
and must be excused for having once taught, in the good old student 
days, " Thirst is the thesis, beer the antithesis, and the synthesis under 
the table." 



8o THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

the tests of Intelligent criticism or discover the meaning 
of words is indeed sufficiently proved by their acceptance 
of the dogmas of positive religion. But the crushing 
significance of Hegelianism lies in the fact that it was 
precisely the most learned and distinguished men of his 
time who fuddled themselves senseless with his frothy 
beverage. Even his critics, Trendelburg (" Logical In- 
vestigations "), Ulrici ("Principles and Methods of 
the Hegelian Philosophy "), and Heinrich Leo (" He- 
gellnge ") are all slaves of the word. They talk round 
about Hegel, make some small reservation here, some 
slight objection there, raise their eyebrows, lay finger on 
nose, without seeing that they are all expending their 
energy on a soap-bubble, as the Hegelian philosophy 
was correctly described by Schopenhauer. 

The four " truly philosophic historians " selected by 
Edward Gans are really indistinguishable from the 
philosophic theologians, whose history is concerned with 
the four world kingdoms of the prophet Daniel, the six 
days of Creation, and the Sabbath of Genesis. The brief 
and concise quotation from William von Humboldt 
which Hegel chose as motto for his " Lectures on the 
Philosophy of History " — " World history has no mean- 
ing without world government " — contains in eight 
words all the wisdom which the so-called philosophic 
historian spread into so many volumes. The man who 
thirsts to know, to understand, asks, " What Is the mean- 
ing of all this human activity recorded in history? " He 
receives the unctuous answer: " God has His own de- 
signs for men, and they fulfil them without knowing it." 
He who is not satisfied must go empty away. 

However, since the days of antiquity, there have 



CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 8i 

always been a few isolated thinkers who did not feel that 
either human destiny or the existence of the universe 
and of natural phenomena was satisfactorily explained 
by this reference to God. They observed human affairs 
closely and without prejudice, and since they found no 
indication there of a common purpose, they forbore to 
ascribe to history such a purpose as would solve its 
riddles, and confined themselves to searching for its 
causes. In Hippocrates' treatise on " Air, Water, and 
Places " is the first recognition of the relation between 
human beings and the places in which they live. From 
the time of the Father of Medicine onwards the influence 
of the climate and the condition of the soil upon men and 
their historical development has been brought forward 
as a subject for constant investigation. J. Bodin ^ rec- 
ognized it as the determining factor in all historical 
events, and quoted Galen and Polybius, who " affirmant 
aeris temperiem necessario nos immutare " *' state the 
necessary effect upon us of the temperature of the air." 
The excessive importance ascribed to climate by Montes- 
quieu exposed him to the ridicule of Voltaire. Never- 
theless, both Turgot, and later on Herder, devoted much 
time and attention to the question, and Karl Ritter made 
it the turning-point of his geographical teaching. 

There is no doubt that man is influenced by his sur- 
roundings. But it is an error to see in them the sole 
explanation of his actions and development. Bagehot's ^ 
argument against those who overstate the importance of 

^ Joannes Bodlnus, " Methodus ad Facilem Historiarum Cog- 
nitionem." Cf. also Henri Baudrillart, "J. Bodin et Son Temps," 
Paris, 1853, pp. 150, 151. 

^Walter Bagehot, "Physics and Politics," London, 1872. 



82 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

climate is irrefutable. He shows that in the Indian 
Archipelago and in Australia two distinct races are 
found inhabiting the same island, and draws the correct 
inference that the cause of their different peculiarities 
cannot be found in the climate, which is the same for 
both. An even more illuminating instance can be given. 
The climate of North America has not substantially 
altered in the last four centuries. About 1500 America 
was a wilderness swept by bands of barbaric warriors in 
a rudimentary stage of civilization. By 1900 civiliza- 
tion there had reached the highest point known. New 
men, in fact, had come and created a civilization such as 
could not have been created by their savage forerunners. 
In this case climate has had nothing to do with the ex- 
planation of the change. To the objection that civiliza- 
tion as it exists in America to-day is not of native growth, 
but an importation from Europe, and that the influence 
of climate is exerted on the origin and not on the spread 
of civilization, one can reply that the wandering of peo- 
ples from country to country and continent to con- 
tinent constitutes an essential stage in history, to which 
many important events in the development of States and 
institutions, and much in the existing condition of 
Europe, America and Australia must be referred. If 
the influence of climate is to be excluded from the wan- 
derings, because they neutralize its effect, it can no longer 
be regarded as a determining factor in far the greatest 
portion of history. 

This cuts the ground from under the feet of T. H. 
Buckle. Buckle collected a mass of valuable particulars, 
wrote most useful chapters on the insubstantiality of 
metaphysics and theology, on the falsity of the assump- 



CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 83 

tion of a free will, on progress and Its conditions, and the 
childishness of the older school of historians. He has 
done solid and suggestive work on certain sections of 
English history; but his initial assumption that the one 
determining factor in the fate of nations is climate and 
the conditions of the soil, is an obvious fallacy. " If," ^ 
he says, " we consider man's constant contact with the 
external world, we shall be convinced that there Is an 
inner connection between the actions of man and the 
laws of Nature." This is correct. But the " laws of 
Nature" must not be limited to climate and the con- 
ditions of the soil. All the laws of Nature affect man, 
and among them those. Indeed, principally that govern 
his thought and feeling. There Is no doubt that man- 
kind was originally, like every other sort of living thing, 
a product of the external conditions under which he had 
to live. But, once adapted to the universal conditions of 
existence on this planet, his action is far more governed 
by acquired characteristics than by the peculiarities of 
different localities. Auguste Comte Is nearer to the 
truth than Buckle when he says : " The history of society 
Is dominated by the history of the human spirit." ^ As 
a matter of fact, all human activity is determined by the 
human spirit, which finds its stimuli In human needs. 
It Is here that we seek in the last resort the key to all 
action, whether Individual or general — that is, to history 
itself. Comte's famous division of human development 
into three stages, called by him theological, metaphysical, 
and scientific, based as we have seen on an Idea of Vice's, 

^ Buckle, op. cit., vol. i., p. 31. 

^ Auguste Comte, " Cours de Philosophie Positive," Paris, 1839, 
vol. iv., p. 460. 



84 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

Is arbitrary In so far as It suggests a stern succession in 
events really contemporaneous. 

In the theological period man's thought Is animistic 
and anthropomorphic : he endows Nature with life, and 
personifies its phenomena, and invents gods. In the 
metaphysical his thought Is deductive : he approaches 
phenomena with definite hypotheses, In the light of 
which he connects and co-ordinates what he sees. In the 
scientific, finally, he proceeds by induction, observation 
and experiment, and adapts his thought to the conditions 
of reality. It is, of course, possible that at some remote 
period In the past all thought was theological or meta- 
physical In form, although there are many Indications 
that there have at every time been a few men 
whose thought was scientific and conditioned by the 
actual. One thing is certain: that even at the present 
day the vast majority are still In the theological and 
metaphysical period, and only a tiny minority has 
reached the scientific stage. Comte's division Is only 
valuable as a historical explanation in so far as it throws 
a certain light on the processes and development of 
human thinking, and on the Ignorance, superstition, and 
error at the root of so much human activity. It is true 
that mankind was originally profoundly Ignorant, and 
acquired any knowledge only by a slow and painful ef- 
fort. But the establishment of this fact, and the dis- 
covery of nomenclature to describe It, does not in itself 
entitle Comte to be regarded as a philosophic historian. 

Karl Marx is In one sense the antithesis. In another 
the complement, of Auguste Comte. The latter centres 
the whole mechanism of history in the human spirit, of 
whose movements It is the effect; the former views all 



CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 85 

historical events merely as the result of man's endeavour 
to supply his immediate physical needs. According to 
him, the law of property determines all the forms of 
society and the State. The desire for possession is the 
driving force in human activity, and the struggle for 
earthly goods at once the goal of all politics, the mean- 
ing of all institutions, and the cause of every legal suit.^ 
Vico had regarded history as substantially a conflict be- 
tween rich and poor, although he admitted the force of 
other considerations. Marx is certainly on the right 
track in looking upon man's needs as the cause of his 
actions, but he makes the mistake of conceiving of need 
in too limited a sense. It is not enough for a man to 
have his hunger and thirst satisfied, and his body clothed 
and adorned; he has intellectual and spiritual needs that 
are as a rule far more acute than his merely vegetative 
ones. The critics of the Marxian view of history have 
pointed to numerous important events that cannot with- 
out violence be referred to strictly economic causes. 
Alexander's conquests, the occupation of Spain by the 
Moors, and the seven hundred years of war there 
against their domination, the Hundred Years' War be- 
tween France and England, the Napoleonic campaigns, 
the Puritan settlement in North America — certainly 

^ Marx himself sums up his theory as follows: "The sum total 
of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of 
society — the real foundation on which rise legal and political super- 
structures, and to which correspond definite forms of social con- 
sciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the 
general character of the social, political, and spiritual processes of 
life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, 
but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their conscious- 
ness " (Karl Marx, " Criticism of Political Economy," edited by Karl 
Kautsky, Stuttgart, 1897, Preface, p. xi.). 



86 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

none of these events originated in the acquisition or 
division of property. 

With naive anthropomorphism men believed that 
their desire to comprehend the meaning of life and of 
the world could be satisfied from the contemplation of 
the history of the world, although humanity occupies no 
larger place in the universe than any order of ferns or 
insects, and the history of mankind can go as far and no 
farther towards the solution of the riddle of the universe 
than the life and development of the polar bear or the 
cockchafer. The customary philosophy of history pre- 
tends to discover in the history of mankind an answer to 
the eternal questions whence, whither, why, and where- 
fore, and ascribes to it a purpose comparable to the crud- 
est theological inventions of primitive man. This teleo- 
logical philosophy of history has no scientific value, 
and may be completely neglected by any reasonable man. 
Less discreditable to human intelligence is that causal 
philosophy of history which neither finds nor seeks for 
any purpose in history, and is modestly content to in- 
vestigate the causes of human action. Hitherto its re- 
sults have certainly been very incomplete and dubious, 
and it has systematized no convincing explanation of the 
laws of human development and the course of historical 
events. 

Every philosophic historian who is what is called 
materialistic — everyone, that is to say, who on principle 
refrains from the dreams or the delirium of metaphysics 
— ^tends to see man in one aspect only, and not man as a 
whole, as he lives, and moves, and has his being, as he 
suffers, seeks, and loses his way. This is true even of 
Marx, even of Buckle. But a philosophy of history 



CUSTOMARY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 87 

which thus falls to present the whole living man, with 
all his idiosyncrasies, is necessarily false. For it is this 
whole living man who composes the history which the 
philosophy of history has to explain. 



CHAPTER III 

THE ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY 

A TRUE understanding of the matter and meaning of 
history is not to be obtained either by the anecdotal 
method, which records events, and nothing but events, 
with the dehght of the gossiping barber; or by the in- 
tellectual method, which seeks to discover causes and 
events, and explains them in a more or less childish, 
short-sighted, and arbitrary fashion; or the philo- 
sophical, which, while claiming to deduce universal laws, 
a general plan, direction, and goal from the multitude of 
individual instances, has really only introduced subjective 
preconceptions that are often of the most terrifyingly 
foolish kind. All these methods must fail, because all 
alike devote a diligence and devotion that is really piti- 
able to the study of the inessential, while their eyes are 
firmly closed to what is essential. The historian en- 
deavours to realize the circumstances of an individual,^ 
of a definite group or community, to discover by accurate 
investigation the exact condition under which a particular 
event took place. He tries to find the names of persons 
and places, dates and turning-points in a man's career. 

* Thomas Carlyle, " On Heroes and Hero Worship, and the Heroic 
in History," Lecture I. (I quote from an edition in one volume; 
undated; Ward, Lock and Co.; p. 3) : "For, as I take it. Universal 
History ... is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have 
worked here." 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY 89 

But what is the object of all this concrete individual 
knowledge ? It may afford aesthetic satisfaction, but not 
real knowledge. 

If history is to be anything more than a mere collec- 
tion of stories and tales, if it is to do anything more than 
while away the tedium of the reader like any other 
imaginative story, it must give a picture of the life of 
mankind: must show the means by which the human 
species has gradually occupied the earth's surface and 
established itself upon it, the ends at which it aims, the 
means by which it pursues them ; the forces, internal or 
external, that determine its actions; the emotional and 
intellectual elements of its consciousness, the impulses 
that dominate the habits that control it, and the means 
by which it satisfies its needs. In one word, history, if 
it is to teach anything worth knowing, must not be the 
history of this or that individual, but of humanity. 

The only point of view from which sound conclusions 
are to be obtained as to the action and existence of 
humanity is that from which it is viewed as a part by 
the natural order, and not apart from and elevated above 
it. Humanity is one among the animal species that 
contend together for the possession of the earth, or di- 
vide it among themselves, without disturbing competi- 
tion; only it is, by reason of its more highly developed 
brain and nerves, more capable than any other of acquir- 
ing very favourable conditions by adaptation to, and 
alteration of, the given environment. What we want, 
then, is to observe its behaviour under the most varied 
circumstances, keeping attention focussed on attributes 
of universal significance, and not on such so-called " his- 
torical " facts as the Christian and surname of any 



90 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

individual, the place and time of his birth, and the bench 
on which he sat at school before he got into trousers. 
Suppose we are investigating, not man, but some other 
animal species. To avoid transgressing into the regions 
of imagination, I will not say suppose an inhabitant of 
Mars came to earth, not with any such hostile intention 
as Wells ascribes to our planetary neighbours, but simply 
in order to inform himself about the ways and habits of 
the highest livirtg species upon this earth. Let us rather 
take any animal species. For example, take the ants, 
which have been so lovingly and thoroughly studied by 
Huber, Forel, Lubbock, and Wasmann. We can ivatch 
them building streets and towns; see them engaged on 
warlike or predatory expeditions ; see their domestic and 
family life, their social institutions, their class system, 
the animals they keep for milking, their cultivation of 
nourishing mushrooms. All this is worth knowing: it 
has a meaning and an interest for us. But would it occur 
to any investigator to record with painful exactitude the 
day and spot in a certain wood where the battle was 
fought between the armies of the Formica rufa and 
Lasius aiienus, and the names of the leaders and heroes 
on either side; the duration of the reign of a certain 
queen in any heap, the manner in which the youthful 
swarms are driven from the parent heap, and when they 
founded new heaps, etc.? Had the students of ant life 
lost themselves in such tedious detail, and attempted to 
relate the lives of individual ants, and their accidental 
relationships, encounters, and adventures, instead of 
being held in high estimation for their knowledge of 
nature they would have been laughed at as fools, even 
had they written most poetical biographies of ants in 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY 91 

the approved anthropomorphic fashion. In so far as 
they were successful therein, our interest would have 
been aroused, not by ants, but by men dressed up and 
disguised as ants; and while we might once more have 
enjoyed the artistic creation, we should have acquired no 
knowledge. The ant student will recognize that every 
activity of the species under observation displays certain 
common traits, and responds in a certain regular way to 
given circumstances; that certain characteristics of sen- 
sation, will, and action are common to all the individuals 
composing it. He will then endeavour to discover the 
common element, and prove its constant recurrence amid 
the changing conditions of time and place, while he neg- 
lects the accidental individuals in whom the universal 
characteristics of the species happen to be expressed. In 
this way he can extract what is really worth knowing 
from the swarming activity of the ant, and give us an 
intimate knowledge of its life. 

It may be objected that what he gives us is natural 
history but not history, and the two ideas must not be 
confounded. *' History," says Barth,^ " is the history 
of man as distinct from natural history: the distinction 
is more than two thousand years old." The distinction 
is artificial; it has no real existence. The answer to 
Earth's further statement that: "The first difference 
between natural and human history is that the former is 
concerned with the species, the latter with society 
within the species," is that society is the condition of the 
existence of the species, the form it has evolved in the 
struggle for existence, just as the ant-heap is for the ants, 

* Dr. Paul Barth, " The Philosophy of History as Sociology," Leip- 
zig. 1897, p. 3. 



92 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

which do not live as Isolated Individuals, and that the 
one species can no more be described apart from society 
than the other apart from the heap. At least, beyond 
a certain stage in development, life In society Is identical 
with the life of the human species. The ideas are In- 
separable; and there is no justification for the antithesis 
between the history and natural history of man. 

Equally fallacious are the other apparent objections 
to the view that, in investigating and recording human 
development, the Individual, as accidental, must be 
neglected, and attention devoted to the universal 
peculiarities of the human species that are displayed In 
Individual action. The reason why the fate of any 
particular ant appears to us of no importance when we 
are studying the species biologically is simply that we are 
not ants. If we were, we should not be satisfied to know 
that wars have been waged, battles fought, and captives 
. taken by different nations among the ants, and we should 
also seek to know the fate met by this or that ant In 
battle or slavery, and the details of this or that cam- 
paign. The inhabitants of Mars may view human 
history with the detachment with which we regard the 
existence of the ant ; but since historical research is not, 
as a matter of fact, undertaken by Martians, but by men, 
it is natural that. Instead of confining themselves to the 
observation and record of features of universal appli- 
cation, they should dwell on the accidental Incidents of 
concrete persons, and enter into all the Ins and outs of 
their earthly existence. 

This fact Involves the naive admission that history, in 
so far as it clings to concrete events and Individual 
action, does not contain objective truths of universal 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY 93 

application. Instead of affording scientific knowledge 
of the life of the human species, it tends to reflect the 
subjective emotions of attraction and repulsion. Sym- 
pathy with certain individuals, satisfaction or dissatis- 
faction with certain events, tends, in a word, to 
reproduce the psychical and emotional atmosphere of a 
stupid tea-party. In so far it is no more than a rather 
solemn form of gossip, and in no sense that natural his- 
tory which it must be if it is to deserve the attention of 
earnest seekers after truth. 

The attempt to regard the life of man in space and 
time from the same objective standpoint as that of the 
ant meets with another objection, that is brought for- 
ward more generally, and frequently with a good deal of 
feeling. It is said that to place mankind on the same 
level as any other animal species, high or low, is an insult 
to the dignity of man. The spiritual existence of man- 
kind and of every individual man sets him in a world 
apart, with its own riddles to be answered and its own 
far-reaching truths to be discovered. Animal life offers 
nothing of comparable significance. This indignant 
claim is but a belated and impotent outburst of the same 
anthropomorphic vanity that once rose in wrath against 
the teaching of Copernicus: the idea that the earth 
inhabited by man was not the centre of the universe, but 
merely a subordinate member of a system regulated by 
the sun, a handful of dust lost in the endlessness of the 
All. Nowadays the idea of our planet as predominant is 
left to childish ignorance and obsolete theology. But 
there was another outburst when the comfortable as- 
sumption of the supreme importance and significance of 
the human race was again disturbed by Linnaeus's in- 



94 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

elusion of primates — apes, lemurs, and, oddly enough, 
even bats — in one order. It grew to a tempest when 
Darwin gave definiteness to the Linnaean idea by main- 
taining a blood-relationship between men and monkeys, 
which has since been proved by Uhlenhuth's biochemical 
experiments on serum reaction. 

From the point of view of natural science it is proved 
beyond dispute that the human family belongs to a 
certain family of animals, and through it is connected 
with all animals, and probably with all living things. Big 
words may be used by those who fulminate against such 
a relationship, but the proofs of it are incontestable. It 
is therefore accepted that man is an animal like any other 
animal, so far as corporeal faculty and organic activity 
goes. But that is all. The consequences are not faced. 
Very unwillingly, and after long struggles, the geocentric 
conception was abandoned; with an entire disregard of 
logic the anthropocentric is still maintained. In spite 
of Darwin and Uhlenhuth, historians and historic 
philosophers still regard man as the central fact of 
creation, as the goal to which everything in nature works, 
and in which it finds its significance. Did man really 
dominate the universe, or even the earth, In this manner, 
every detail of his life and activity would acquire an 
importance to which that of no other living thing would 
be comparable. But It Is not so. It is a childish Illusion 
by which man tries to hold the field against the advance 
of science. 

Human vanity and prejudice apart, the human species 
appears as one special form of life upon the earth and in 
the universe, influencing natural forces and the destiny 
of our planet no more and no less than an order of flies 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY 95 

or mosses. There are species enough on the earth whose 
influence has been far greater than man's upon the 
minutiae that compose the external surface of our planet : 
its main lines remain unaffected by any of them. Tiny 
creatures, often invisible to the naked eye — fora- 
miniferaea, bryozoa, coral polypi, shellfish, and crustaceae 
— have built islands, heaped up mountains, created or 
transformed continents, directed winds and currents, 
determined the courses of streams, fixed boundaries to 
the ocean, and influenced the climate of whole regions of 
the world. Compared with this, all man's creations and 
transformations sink into insignificance. The few 
isthmuses he has dug through, the few canals he has 
constructed, the few tunnels he has made through the 
mountains, are puny undertakings in comparison with the 
vast stratifications of chalk and mussel-shells ; and many 
a South Sea atoll shows more real creative effort, meas- 
ured in miles, than any of man's undertakings. Were all 
life extinguished upon earth, there would remain far 
fewer traces of the former existence of man, after the 
stone, wood, and metal erections had rotted away from 
its surface, than of the animals, who are so much more 
numerous and so much more deeply fixed. And at the 
last analysis, human life, traced from Its animal origin, 
through all the stages of its historical development down 
to its final inevitable extinction, appears as no more than 
an inessential episode of cosmic life : one of the countless 
epiphenomena accompanying the complex of eternal 
forces at work, and no more Important than this or that 
flickering of the northern light, than the growth and 
subsidence of a mountain, the rise and disappearance of 
a comet. 



96 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

No student of natural science now believes in the 
eternity of the earth and the planetary system. Obser- 
vation of all the available processes of the universe com- 
pels the assumption of an endless creation and disruption 
of the combinations we call planets. The earth, like 
every other mass, body, sun, or solar system, had a 
beginning as such, and will have an end as such, what- 
ever the movements may have been that caused it to 
come into being, that will continue after it has ceased to 
be. And man will not survive the earth. This is 
obvious except to the spiritualists, who believe that the 
species, incarnated in astral bodies, will be translated to 
another star when existence upon the earth is no longer 
possible for it. Long before the earth is dissolved into 
primary ions, long before it scorifies or freezes, all 
differentiated forms of life will, in all probability, be 
extinct upon it. This I hold in spite of a strong con- 
viction that, however unfavourable natural conditions 
may be, man is capable of adaptations as yet undreamed 
of. But when the human race is extinct, when the last 
trace of its existence, the last bone, the last bit of human 
handiwork, has disappeared, and the earth has followed 
after the other stars in the eternal cycle of generation 
and dissolution, what, then, will be the significance of 
that human history the orthodox historian obstinately 
places above and outside of the processes of nature? 

Such a consideration involves the standpoint of eter- 
nity; from which, of course, only the eternal can be 
regarded. Humanity, however, is finite. The views of 
a small portion of this finitude such as ourselves can only 
have a value when they are accommodated to our limited 
vision. Philosophically, we are entitled to an interest 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY 97 

in whatever happens to humanity, although we know 
that it must one day pass away, and with it all that 
thought of which it was the object; to an interest in 
whatever happens to ourselves, although we stand in 
the shadow of death, and the day must come when we 
shall cease to be, ourselves and all that we have felt and 
thought and made our intellectual possession. But this 
interest is various in its nature, as are the needs from 
which it arises and the satisfactions that it demands. 
We have seen that, when aroused by anecdotes relative 
to a particular time and place, it arises partly out of a 
natural feeling of sympathy with whatever affects human 
nature, and partly from the hunger of the imagination 
for anything extraordinary, excessive or surprising, in 
which case the interest is purely emotional and closely 
akin to the aesthetic. It is the beauty, not the truth, of 
the anecdote, then, that matters: a preference for the 
probable or the possible exists only in so far as the 
grown-up finds his aesthetic appreciation impeded by the 
doubt and difficulty created in his mind by an anecdote 
that is palpably fictitious. Schiller has expressed this 
emotional and aesthetic interest: " Only what has never 
happened never can grow out of date." It again ex- 
plains why people cling more closely to stories of things 
" that have never happened " than to any well-authenti- 
cated narration of the dry bones of truth, and prefer the 
unreliable but brilliant historian, or, more properly, 
story-teller, to the conscientious investigator, who ven- 
tures on no statement of which he is not practically 
certain. But over and above this emotional and aesthetic 
interest there is another — the scientific interest — which 
has no use for concrete anecdotes of a merely entertain- 



98 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

ing and moving kind, if they have nothing to teach and 
represent no general truth. I am not forgetting that 
even this intellectual interest is originally rooted in the 
feelings. It is, however, differentiated from the merely 
emotional, not only quantitatively, but qualitatively, and 
stands in much the same relation to it that artificial 
attention, directed by judgment, and will, occupies 
towards the purely natural response awakened by imme- 
diate sense impressions, and sustained by sensations and 
feelings. Ordinary history, with its tedious circumlocu- 
tions and disproportionate interest in what is inessen- 
tial, appears wholly trivial from the point of view of 
such an intellectual interest, and the philosophy upon 
which it rests wholly false, in so far as it aims, not 
at drawing conclusions as to the origin and develop- 
ment of man, but at throwing over it a net of artificial 
fancies. 

The inquiring mind of man, hungry for knowledge, 
and dimly aware that written history has hitherto failed 
to give it what it wants, has attempted in a number of 
different ways to get at the sources of real information. 
Thus, out of the desire to understand the whole range of 
man's natural history, there have arisen a group of 
special sciences devoted to the study of man. Anatomy 
gives Instruction as to his structure, physiology as to the 
workings of his organic mechanism. In the course of 
their development these two branches have expanded 
into comparative anatomy and general biology. They 
have ceased to be sciences of man in becoming sciences 
of life In general, in which man takes his place beside 
many other living forms, and in so far they do not belong 
to our subject. A specifically human character was long 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY 99 

maintained — longer than by anatomy or physiology — by 
psychology, which tries to lay highroads across the world 
of consciousness. But it, too, has recently entered the 
wider sphere of animal psychology, thus following the 
universal tendency that directs all branches of the sci- 
ence of man that really have knowledge for their object 
to transcend the boundaries that limit them to him, and 
claim to be co-ordinated with universal being and the 
world as a whole, where man and humanity play but a 
subordinate part. Anatomy, physiology, and psychology 
have collected the positive material out of which a 
human science has already been built up — anthro- 
pology — which does for him what zoology does for 
any animal species. More dubious is the position of the 
subdivision of anthropology, known as ethnology, the 
study of peoples. It is a hybrid, half natural, half social 
science. Proceeding from the assumption that each 
people presents a definite unity created by nature, it 
endeavours to describe, and where possible to elucidate, 
the characteristics of peoples, the distinctions and resem- 
blances between them, the changes they have undergone 
in time and place. But the assumption is not proved, 
and is very difficult of proof : it is far more probable that 
peoples are artificial and purely political creations, and 
that their origin, transformation, and destruction, slow 
though it may often be, is the work of man. Thus any 
description of them has no really scientific interest, and 
can teach nothing of mankind that is not more com- 
pletely and searchingly revealed by anthropology. From 
this specious, fundamental error of regarding as a 
natural organism what is really the work of man ethnol- 
ogy naturally obtains a number of false conclusions: it 



loo THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

Introduces preconceived opinions into the observation 
and description of peoples, characterizes them by 
factitious traits, and presents a false picture by means of 
statistical averages and audacious generalizations, all by 
way of deducing a national psychology that does not 
correspond with reality, and altogether is little adapted 
to the spread of knowledge. The extension of history 
into the unrecorded past has led to the creation of a 
special branch — primitive history — ^which differs from 
history principally in so far as, in the absence of any 
proved and provable evidence, it has of necessity to do 
without exact delineation of isolated events, the period 
at which they happened, and the persons actively or 
passively concerned in them, and to confine itself to the 
general features of the existence of human individuals 
and groups. Primitive history seehj tj know the physical 
constitution of early man, his intellectual capacity and 
manner of speaking, living, feeding, and dressing, his 
progress in crafts, art and knowledge, his loves and 
hates, battles, aUiances, wanderings and settlements; 
ignorance of the names of particular leaders, warriors 
and magicians does not disturb it. Any accurate knowl- 
edge of such names as might possibly come Its way, by a 
collocation of circumstances that is Indeed almost incon- 
ceivable, could add nothing to the edifice of primitive 
history, significant as It might be for the philologist. 
The results which It can give are a real contribution to 
the natural history of the human species, and not a mere 
rubbish-heap of anecdotes. In which what is essential 
Is overlaid and hidden by what Is unimportant. When 
the methods of primitive history are applied to human- 
ity as it is in the present, and as records reveal It to have 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY loi 

been in the past, we have the history of morals; and 
when we leave the material forms and conditions of 
existence, and envisage the phenomena presented by the 
life of man in groups, and when regularly organized 
into societies, we see rising before us the science of 
sociology, new, and as yet confined within no strict I'mi- 
tations. Sociology does really deserve the name of 
science, since it investigates the laws expressed in the 
form and operation, the morpholog}^ and dynamics, of 
human life when organized in society and the State, and 
tries to understand how and why society and the State 
have arisen and assumed the forms they do as a matter 
of fact present. 

The purpose of sociology is, by definition, closely akin 
to that of the philosophy of history, but there is between 
them a fundamental difference of method. Whether 
inevitably or no, the philosophy of history has, as a 
matter of fact, always been deductive, while sociology is 
inductive. The former is subjective dreaming, the latter 
the collection and arrangement of objective fact, from 
which the mere co-operation of a number of students 
tends almost automatically to sift out the subjective 
points of view which do undoubtedly exist. The one 
handles its facts with despotic violence, the other treats 
them with respect and deference. One can foresee that 
when sociology has fully mastered and analyzed its ma- 
terial, it will completely relegate the philosophy of his- 
tory to a position alongside of dogmatic and apologetic 
theology, in that museum of human errors to which 
augury, astrology, the interpretation of dreams, and all 
the other silly games that once passed as sciences, have 
already been consigned. Wundt is a great thinker, but 



I02 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

when he called the philosophy of history the becoming, 
and sociology the being, of society, he was guilty of an 
artificial distinction between identical things that must, 
with all respect, be called a mere play upon words. An 
understanding of the being of society includes a knowl- 
edge of its becoming, and, conversely, becoming can only 
be understood from such a correct observation of being 
as shows it to have been determined at all periods of 
human history by the same forces and laws, those forces 
and laws which have also been the condition of becoming. 
To take an analogous case, the laws of geology were not 
understood until It was realized that throughout the past, 
as far back as the original formation of the earth, the 
same chemical, physical, and mechanical laws prevailed 
which are operative in this planet to-day, and that the 
most ancient strata were formed In the same manner as 
those which have jurt appeared beneath our eyes. Soci- 
ology Is destined to occupy the highest place In the 
encyclopaedia of human sciences, since It co-ordinates the 
results of all the rest ; It Is the keystone, maintaining and 
crowning their span ; It Is the completion of anthropology 
on the Intellectual side. 

Barth ^ sums up the relation between sociology and 
history In the dazzling formula : " History seems to me 
to be concrete sociology in the sense In which a drama Is 
concrete psychology." This Is only true within limita- 
tions. A drama is a poetic invention. It could only 
serve as a source for the serious study of human char- 
acter were it that faithful reflection of actuality which 
it practically never is, even when the poet has genius 

^ Dr. Paul Barth, " The Philosophy of History as Sociology," Leip- 
zig, 1897, p. iv. 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY 103 

enough to penetrate the hidden depths of character, and 
instinctively divine the compHcated interaction of the 
forces at work there. Zola imagined, when he plunged 
his invented characters in a flood of invented action, that 
he was following the method of Claude Bernard, and 
making scientific experiments. His " experimental 
romances " are the outcome of this remarkable idea of 
his. Barth has some sort of experimental drama in his 
mind. 

Certainly, however, it would never occur to any 
scientific psychologist to use a drama as material for 
research, and obtain from it any valid conclusions, even 
about the psychology of its author. History can only 
be called concrete sociology in so far as the historian is 
certain of the events which he describes, and conscious of 
the sociological mechanism that moves his human 
marionettes — two assumptions that have hitherto hardly 
ever been realized. But if Barth simply means that 
history, if correctly narrated, is sociological casuistry — 
is, that is to say, a collection of examples illustrating the 
laws established by sociology as governing the being and 
activity of man — one can agree with him, for to this 
extent the formula contains its own proof. Concrete 
historical narrative, that is to say, is only useful to en- 
liven the austerity of sociology, to make it more at- 
tractive and less dull, and give it some aesthetic and 
literary charm. At the same time the true science of 
human existence cannot be concrete history, but general 
sociology. We may put it thus: Sociology is history 
without proper names; history is sociology made con- 
crete and individual. The relation between them is that 
between algebra and arithmetic. The subject-matter 



104 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

and content of each is the biology of the species, homo 
sapiens. 

For sociology the present affords a more fruitful field 
of study than the past, because it can be more precisely 
observed with the aid of exact enumeration and measure- 
ment. At a pinch it could do without history, although 
it must be admitted that certain survivals are more com- 
prehensible when we know their origin and the part they 
once played; but history without sociology is a mere 
collection of anecdotes or philosophical speculation, sub- 
jective and devoid of scientific value, such as deserves the 
contempt of old Sextus Empiricus, who called history 
aixWoSo's vXrj, a confuscd collection of accidents. 

When the existence and activities of mankind are 
once viewed in the right light, it is clearly revealed as 
one among many living species, but far more interesting 
than any of them, both objectively and subjectively, 
because it has attained the highest stage of intellectual 
development of them all, and because we ourselves be- 
long to it. We comprehend that its destiny is condi- 
tioned by the development of natural tendencies under 
the pressure of the outer world. To arrive at any results 
about it, we must study it on the same plan and by the 
same methods that are applied to every other living 
species. Observation and its results are nullified by the 
introduction of any preconceived hypothesis for which 
there is no foundation in objective fact — for instance, 
that the human species occupies an exceptional position 
towards nature and the universe as a whole, and enjoys 
privileges shared by no other species — if, in fact, we are 
childishly enslaved by the anthropocentric superstition. 
Freed from this venerable error, we may profitably ob- 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY 105 

serve man, and construct an accurate picture of his nature 
from his behaviour under different circumstances. All 
knowledge of mankind, all anthropology in the widest 
sense, must be and subserve biology. This is as true of 
psychophysics and introspective psychology as of anat- 
omy, embryology, and physiology. Sociology, too, is 
biological, and must, in so far as it claims to be scientific, 
follow the statistical method in its descriptions, and the 
psychological in its interpretation, explanation, and 
classification. History makes a useful contribution to 
the natural history of mankind only when, as a form of 
retrospective sociology, it throws light upon the universal 
characteristics common to mankind as a whole. Were 
its facts securely established and the psychology of 
primitive man accessible, it might complete sociology by 
means of a scientific account of development, which 
would settle the vexed question whether human nature 
has maintained its original qualities, Its basic Instincts, 
and typical reactions unchanged throughout the ages, or 
whether It, In the course of thousands of years, displays 
something more than formal adaptation — namely, real 
change and progress. But psychology remains the most 
important branch of the science of man. It Is through 
his intellectual activity that man Is distinguished from 
the other living creatures dwelling beside him on the 
earth ; it is his intellect that must be studied If he is to be 
represented different, as he is, from all other living 
things. Psychology must supply sociology with an ex- 
planation of the phenomena of the common life of 
man: the rise and development of institutions, the na- 
ture and activity of the State, the forms of government, 
religion, law, morahty, and national Intercourse. For 



io6 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

all these departments of human life correspond to needs 
of human nature and an understanding of them depends 
on psychology, and never on history alone. John Stuart 
Mill enunciates this principle in his "Logic": "The 
explanation of historical phenomena lies in the laws of 
the human spirit " ; and Herbart ^ expressed the same 
view almost at the same time: " There is no doubt that 
the forces operative in society are psychological in their 
origin," There is no use in knowing the visible origin 
of institutions, and the course of their development to 
existing forms, unless the intellectual peculiarities, 
needs, impulses, and efforts out of which they grew, and 
must have grown, can also be displayed. Only then can 
we begin to understand them. History can assist us to 
this knowledge in various ways. It can refer the com- 
plex phenomena to simple causes, such as can be fully 
penetrated and understood. It can remove the obscurity 
that hides their connection with definite human peculiar- 
ities and tendencies, by bringing forward a mass of ex- 
amples to prove that man has always, at all times and 
places, been actuated by similar needs, and sought to sat- 
isfy them by the same method — a method always subject 
to the conditions of his own nature. At the same time, it 
can keep in sight certain exceptional situations valuable 
as experiments, becausethey are favourable to the display 
of certain psychic traits and peculiarities which remain 
in the background under the average conditions of life, 
and are therefore apt to be overlooked. Sociology and 
history, identical as concepts, are the product of human 
psychology, and from them we can obtain a retrospect 
of psychology Itself. All the peculiarities of human 

^ Herbart's Works, edited by Hartenstein, vol. vl., p. 33. 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY 107 

nature, those most obvious and those most profoundly 
concealed, are displayed in the manner of his reaction, 
past and present, to impressions from the external 
world, and in the terms he has made for himself with 
life and with that world. The biologist who studies 
these peculiarities by the clear light of reason, un- 
clouded by any mystic haze, can determine from 
them the laws according to which man has reacted 
on his environment, and must continue to react upon 
it so long as his nature does not undergo a complete 
change. 

An exact scientific knowledge of the general concrete 
features of the life of the human species can only be 
acquired by the observation of great masses of in- 
stances — that is, from statistics. There is thus insight 
in Schlozer's witty epigram: "History is statistics in 
movement, statistics history in repose." But it is neces- 
sary to look away from the general to the particular so 
soon as the causes of phenomena are touched, and an 
explanation required of the how and why, as well as 
the what, of institutions, habits, etc. In other words, 
the natural history of man is psychology, and psychol- 
ogy is necessarily individual. 

There is no psychology of the crowd. What goes by 
that name is an error, a word without meaning, or else 
the unimportant result of a multiplication of individual 
psychology, unimportant because addition or multiplica- 
tion of a quantity does not alter its nature or convey 
any further information about it. Thus there is some- 
thing paradoxical in the name of the new science of 
sociology, since it cannot be the science of society, but 
only of the individuals that compose society — that is, 



io8 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

only anthropology. We cannot approach society sci- 
entifically until we possess an exact knowledge of the 
component parts of which it is the sum. 

Auguste Comte goes so far as to declare that the 
individual man absolutely does not exist; there is 
nothing but humanity.^ He denies that the develop- 
ment of society can be deduced from the peculiarities of 
the individual. This opinion is shared by Wundt; ^ and 
even Ernest Mach, who would exclude metaphysics 
from philosophy, departs so far from this view as to 
conceive of humanity as a unified organism, " a poly- 
pus," whose members " have lost their organic rela- 
tionships." Here he is drawing upon something that is 
not the result of observation. The characteristic 
that he introduces into the infinitely complex and 
perpetually changing picture presented by human be- 
ings, and called humanity, exists in his mind, not in 
reality. 

Such propositions lead a superficial writer like Gum- 
plowicz ^ to make the rash assertion that " science has 
done with individualism and atomism," although the 
most casual perusal of the literature of the subject shows 
that such a statement has no foundation. Simmel * 
says: " Nothing is real save the movements of the mole- 

^ Auguste Comte, " Cours de Philosophie Positive," fourth edition, 
Paris, 1877, vol. vi., p. 590: "From the static or dynamic point of 
view, man is really and fundamentally an abstraction; reality belongs 
to humanity alone." 

^ W. Wundt, " Logic," second edition, Stuttgart, 1895, vol. ii., p. 
291. 

^ Ludwig Gumplowicz, " Principles of Sociology," second edition, 
Vienna, 1905. 

* Georg Simmel, " Problems of the Philosophy of History," Leip- 
zig, 1892, p. 39. 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY 109 

cules and the laws that regulate them. No peculiar 
law can be assumed as governing the sum of such move- 
ments when grouped together In a totality." Spencer ^ 
says the same thing: "A totality of men possesses the 
qualities that can be deduced from the qualities of the 
Individuals. . . . The qualities of the units determine 
the qualities of the combination." H. S. Maine dis- 
tinguishes the society of ancient from that of modem 
times. Previously the sociological unit was the family. 
" But the unit of modern society Is the Individual 
man." Lotze says in the " Microcosm " : " The only 
active points in the course of history are the minds of 
living individuals." Schopenhauer ("Parerga and 
Paralipomena ") says: "Peoples only exist In ab- 
stracts ... It is the individuals that are real." Louis 
Blanc sees only Individuals In history: "Individualism 
triumphed through Luther in religion, through Voltaire 
and the Encyclopaedists In the Intellectual sphere, 
through Montesquieu In economics, and through the 
French Revolution In the world of reality." No cita- 
tion of authorities Is, however, necessary to prove that 
Individual men alone, and not a totality of men, whether 
it be called people, class, society, or humanity, repre- 
sent reality for the natural history of man, which we 
have called sociology, or history looked at from a 
sociological point of view. 

The notion of regarding the abstraction " humanity " 
as a reality must have come from theologians and meta- 
physicians, who are in the habit of regarding the spirits 
they have themselves created out of words as possessed 

* Herbert Spencer, " Introduction to Social Science," Paris, 1880, 
P- 55- 



no THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

of a matter-of-fact existence. In Ezekiel, chapter xvi., 
we find the first comparison of Jerusalem to a man who 
passes through childhood, grows up, takes a wife, is false 
to her, and is stoned to death; and it is done with the 
full consciousness of employing a merely poetic simile. 
But Cicero was taking the image literally when he 
found all the stages of human life reproduced in the 
history of Rome — birth, adolescence, youth, maturity. 
Seneca, the orator, was pleased with the notion, and 
borrowed it from Cicero, Florus in the Preface to his 
" Outline of Roman History," generalized the idea to 
all peoples, in whose life he found " quattuor gradus 
processusque " — the four stages and progresses of 
human existence — ^birth, childhood, youth, age. Am- 
mianus Marcellinus was satisfied with repeating the 
words of Florus. St. Augustine goes a step farther. 
He no longer confines himself to a political form, such 
as a people, but sees the life of humanity as a whole as 
that of an individual man; its life, like his, as a prog- 
ress from childhood to youth, maturity and old age. 
Whether he is comparing or identifying is not clear, 
even to his own mind. Sometimes he begins by premis- 
ing that he is using a figure of speech, but, as his 
thought develops, he falls a victim to his own imag- 
inative faculty, and his metaphor is transformed under 
his pen to a living organism of flesh and blood. Pascal, 
too, observes in the Preface to his " Traite du Vide ": 
" We must look upon the continuity of the human race 
throughout the centuries as the continued existence and 
progressive experience of a single human being." He 
thought to throw light upon the path of progress by 
this fiction. It is, however, quite superfluous, since tra- 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY in 

dition is handed on by each learned man to his suc- 
cessors, and the young are instructed by their elders. It 
is as easy to conceive of a progress of successive genera- 
tions as of humanity as a single rnan profiting by the 
lessons of the experience he gradually accumulates. 
Auguste Comte boasted that his " positive philosophy " 
did, in contradistinction to all theological and meta- 
physical speculations, " subordinate imagination to ob- 
servation." ^ But when, following the example of St. 
Augustine and Pascal, he rejects the individual and 
allows the totality alone to be real, he is maintaining a 
conclusion that is not obtained from observation, but 
simply and solely from imagination.^ 

Simplified by dull and superficial minds, Pascal's 
semi-rhetorical abstractions have suffered literal trans- 
lation Into a crude materialism. Infamous is not too 
strong a word for the performance of von Lilienfeld. 
With terrible seriousness, he takes society, or rather the 
State, as an actual organism in the literal sense of the 

* Auguste Comte, " La Sociologie," edited by Emile Rigolage, Paris, 

1897, P- 51- 

* The image used by Ezekiel, Cicero, Florus, and St. Augustine 
is so natural and reasonable that it constantly occurred to writers 
busied with historical considerations down to quite modern times, 
without their being aware of their predecessors. There is obviously 
a close relationship between them and Vico and Fontenelle in the 
eighteenth century; St. Simon at the beginning, and Littre and Eduard 
V. Hartmann in the third quarter, of the nineteenth, who all speak 
of the life of a people or of humanity as resembling the life of an 
individual: and Fontenelle, St. Simon, and Littre go further, and de- 
clare that a people, like an individual, has in childhood only bodily 
desires; in youth it grows up to labour and develop the imagination 
in the form of poetry and art; in manhood it acquires intellectual 
maturity, and turns to natural sciences and to philosophy. 



112 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

word, and proceeds to give an exact anatomical descrip- 
tion of it. He displays the bones, joints, muscle, tissue 
and nerves, the circulation, the limbs, and the internal 
organs that nourish the creature and determine its 
functions. That it is born, develops, overcomes disease, 
grows old, and dies is obvious. Von Lilienfeld has not 
enough imagination to go farther, and tell us whether 
his State is an organism of the male or female sex, 
whether it marries and has children, or spends its life in 
unblessed solitude, and how its obsequies are celebrated 
when it dies. From his description, its anatomy is 
clearly that of a human being, or at least of a mammal. 
Here again there is a lack of imagination. There is no 
necessity to suppose the State a mammal. It might 
have been an articulated animal, a reptile, or a jelly-fish, 
any of which would have avoided many difficulties and 
been much more picturesque. Schaffle makes the same 
mistake, although he maintained later, in defiance of 
all probability, that his book, " Structure and Life of 
the Social Body," was not meant to be taken literally, 
but allegorically. In spite of Schaffle's recantation, 
Rene Worms maintained his earlier point of view, to 
which von Lilienfeld was faithful to the last. 

It is humiliating to have to record that a group exists 
to this day which supports and cherishes the marvellous 
delusions of Schaffle and Lilienfeld, and even expands 
them — a group that takes itself seriously and is taken 
seriously by others, calls Itself a sociological school, and 
dignifies its play upon words by the prodigious name of 
the " organistic method" — and that sociological con- 
gresses, struggling to be scientific, have, with the 
noblest intentions, gone so far as to enter into heated 



I 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY 113 

discussions of what, after all, is mere play upon words, 
mere drawing of analogies. 

Metaphors apart, to look upon society. State, and 
humanity as an actually living being is a primitive piece 
of innocence worthy of the village wiseacre who ex- 
plains the northern lights as the train of sparks rising 
from the anvil, on which the axle of the earth is being 
repaired by the smith ; or of the naughty schoolboy who 
plays at being a sea-captain, moving over the surface of 
the earth with an indiarubber fastened to the keel of 
his steamer in order that he may play a trick on the 
geographers by rubbing out the lines of latitude and 
longitude, and even the equator. There is something 
incomprehensible in this literal acceptance of a phrase, 
this incapacity to grasp a metaphor, this diseased desire 
to make a fetish of words. 

The truth is that a number of men living together 
under the same or similar conditions are no more one 
living unity, one human being, in the sense in which 
St. Augustine, Pascal, and Auguste Comte use the word, 
than a number of locomotives collected in an engineer- 
ing shop are one single locomotive. Human events are 
the outcome of individual human activity, the reaction 
of individuals upon circumstances originating in na- 
ture and the activity of other human beings; they are 
only explicable by a consideration of Individual qual- 
ities. Every mass movement, be it a war, a rebellion, a 
crusade, a migration, a pilgrimage. Is the outcome of the 
actions of individual men, concerted for that purpose, 
but capable of being regarded and estimated apart. 
Every Institution and the functions connected with It — 
government and the duties of subjects, religion and the 



114 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

observance of its rites, trade, credit, commerce, industry,, 
and the organization of classes — all have arisen out o[ 
some definite human faculty which can only be studied 
in the individual. 

I am fully aware that human beings are biologically 
interdependent, inasmuch as certainly all those who 
belong to one race, and possibly all those who belong 
to the species, are, in the last resort, related and 
descended from the same primal parents from whom 
they have inherited — not, indeed, as Weismann would 
have us believe, the actual corporeal germ-cells now 
living within them, but the tendencies transmitted 
through the germ-cells of their ancestors. This bio- 
logical interdependence is far from involving an organic 
unity, in the sense in which the philosophic historian or 
sociologist who believes in the " organistic method " 
conceives it. For it is not limited to the human 
species; it includes the other animal species, and, 
presumably, all the types of life existent on the 
earth, in the present or the most remote past, from the 
unicellular organism to the most highly differentiated 
human being. From the philosophical potnt of view, 
the notion of such an interdependence of all living mat- 
ter, of all life, is valuable; from the historical it is 
sterile, since an organic unity of the State and of human- 
ity, which, so far as it exists, exists in virtue of the inter- 
dependence of the whole animal, and even the whole 
vegetable, kingdom, is in no sense the key to the com- 
prehension of a single historical event, a single human 
institution. Paracelsus came much nearer the truth 
when he called each man a microcosm, a world in 
himself. In spite of the relationship existing between 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY 115 

human beings, in spite of the resemblance of members 
of the same species to one another, in spite of an inter- 
dependence not confined to members of the same type, 
but extending to all life and to the world in its entirety 
— in spite of all this, human actions can never be under- 
stood except from the point of view of the individual. 
For the organic impulses, in which human actions take 
their rise, always express themselves through the Indi- 
vidual; it is by the individual that they are felt, in him 
they reach the surface of consciousness, in him they 
arouse motives, aspirations, ideas, and judgments giving 
birth to deeds. Unless investigation reaches down to 
these individual roots of human action and behaviour, 
no accurate explanation of the phenomena of the life of 
societies, people, and States can be obtained. 

Few words are responsible for so much mental con- 
fusion as the psychology of the crowd and the psychol- 
ogy of nations. Scipio SIghele's ^ object in his standard 
work on " The Criminal Crowd " was to establish the 
fact that people will do things when they are gathered 
in great numbers that they would never do alone. THe 
fact itself can only be asserted with reservations, and is 
capable of various interpretations. A lofty intellectual 
standard is not to be expected of a crowd, even of one 
composed of highly gifted individuals. The explanation 
Is simple, and not at all mysterious. The union of 
numerous individuals In a crowd does not give rise to a 
new superlndlvidual, possessing an intellectual equip- 
ment quite different from those of the units of which 
the superlndlvidual Is composed. High Intellectual at- 

^ Scipio Sighele, " La Folia Delinquente," second edition, Turin, 
1895. 



ii6 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

tributes — attributes that are, by definition, above the 
average — are individually differentiated. Each indi- 
vidual differentiation, in so far as it is individual, in- 
stead of adding itself to every other, separates itself 
from it, and therefore neutralizes it. Thus there are 
left, after those attributes which are individually dif- 
ferentiated, and therefore higher, have neutralized each 
other, merely the average attributes common to all, 
which, of course, are on a lower plane. I have else- 
where ^ gone fully into the behaviour of the crowd. It 
does not, however, at all follow that, because a number 
of highly intellectual individuals will, when joined into 
a crowd, display but mediocre abilities, that a number of 
highly moral individuals will, when joined into a crowd, 
prove immoral or absolutely criminal. On the contrary, 
I most emphatically deny that a crime would be com- 
mitted by any number of really moral men, however 
great. Any assertion to the contrary is arbitrary and 
incapable of proof. Crimes committed by crowds al- 
ways originate with individuals who, as individuals, are 
naturally predisposed to crime. In a crowd, at any 

^"Paradoxes," seventh edition, Leipzig, not dated, p. 31. Per- 
haps the only writer who credits the crowd with better judgment than 
a highly gifted individual is the tragedian Pomponius Secundus, 
quoted by Pliny the Younger in the Seventeenth Letter of his Fifth 
Book, who used, when his verdict on a piece differed from that of a 
trustworthy friend, to say: "Ad populum provoco " — "I appeal to 
the people." This is, however, really a question of an expression of 
feeling, not of ratiocination ; and since feeling represents a less highly 
differentiated activity of the brain than ratiocination, the difference 
between the average crowd and the cultivated individual may actually 
be less marked in this case. In this sense only there may be some 
truth in the saying that Monsieur Tout-le-monde is cleverer than Mon- 
sieur de Voltaire. 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY 117 

rate, they find accomplices in other individuals whose 
more or less pronouncedly criminal tendencies are as a 
rule kept under by fear of consequences. The fact of 
numbers removes this check, and the evil impulse is 
stimulated by the knowledge that the individual is 
hardly ever punished for his share in crimes committed 
by crowds, because of the dijfficulty of bringing him to 
book. At the same time, the great majority of average 
people, being neither specially good nor specially bad, 
are apt, from their very lack of decided character, to 
imitate the example of someone else. When gathered 
into a crowd, they offer no resistance to the suggestions 
of a few ringleaders, and follow them like sheep. Of 
course, one would probably not be far wrong in saying 
that such average people, even when not gathered into 
a crowd, would probably obey any suggestion made to 
them, granted that the conditions were as remarkably 
favourable as are the rush, excitement, noise, and tumult 
of a concourse. And yet overheated brains would fain 
see I know not what amazing transmogrifications in this 
simple fact. With the mysticism so irresistibly at- 
tractive to weak intellects, they would fain understand, 
or misunderstand, Sighele's psychology of the crowd to 
mean that a crowd is a being apart from and independ- 
ent of the individuals that compose it, possessing im- 
pulses, passions, thoughts and judgments of its own, and 
reasoning, feeling, and acting unlike any individual 
man. If one penetrates their wild and whirling words 
to the kernel of fact that lies behind, the absurdity of 
the assumption is patent. Where is the brain of this 
new and independent organism, that arises out of the 
gathering together of individuals into a crowd? Where 



ii8 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

are these new impulses, passions, etc., situated? Does 
the new organism " crowd " develop a new brain and 
nervous system to express its new feelings, thoughts and 
actions? Even the mystical exponents of the so-called 
psychology of the crowd do not go as far as that. Even 
they assign to the crowd no more than the sum of the 
brain and nerve processes of individuals. What does 
this involve? Are the different phases of which any 
action is the outcome to be conceived as taking place 
in different individual brains? Does, for example, one 
individual or group of individuals receive sense im- 
pressions, another individual or group translate these 
impressions into perception, a third individual or 
group start the train of associations and call up in the 
consciousness the concepts, judgments, and emotions 
that accompany them, while a fourth individual or 
group finally obeys these stimuli and translates them 
into acts ? The absurdity of the idea of such a psychic 
division of labour in producing a common product of the 
kind is obvious. Only in each individual brain can the 
psychic functions of the new super-organism " crowd " 
be carried on, throughout the whole chain that begins 
with the sense stimulus and is completed in the function- 
ing of muscles and glands. It is mere folly to devote 
long words and high-sounding formula to pointing out 
the obvious truth that individuals do perceive, feel, 
think, judge, and act, whether alone or in a crowd. 

A crowd, in the sense in which one can speak of its 
voice, its weight, its strength, has a psychology. That 
is merely to say that a thousand voices shouting make 
more noise than one, a thousand pairs of arms can raise 
heavier weights and do harder work than one, or that- a 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY 119 

floor that would support the weight of one man quite- 
easily may give way beneath a thousand. But psychic- 
ally there is no more difference between a crowd and 
its component parts than between a thousand cannon 
and a single gun. In each case the dynamic effects, the 
actual results, are different ; but it is the merest anthro- 
pomorphism to deduce from this difference a difference 
in the force that creates the effects. 

An apparently reasonable basis for belief in the 
psychology of the crowd can be found in one direction 
only. In a crowd the individual is subject to an excite- 
ment such as he never feels when alone. This excite- 
ment impels him to feel, think, and act in a manner so 
different from that customary to him when alone that, 
on exchanging the crowd for solitude, he marvels at 
himself and at his having been able so to think, feel, and 
act. To this extent, then, one can speak of the psychol- 
ogy of the crowd. 

The fact is correct; the inference false. What does 
It prove that a man feels, thinks, and acts in one way In 
a crowd, in another when alone? Only that the sight 
of a crowd, and the fact of being in it, excites him, and 
that his brain and nerves act in one way when he is 
excited, in another when he Is at peace. But violent 
excitement is not caused solely by a crowd. It arises in 
many circumstances of the most varying kind, as with 
extraordinarily strong sense impressions, danger, or cer- 
tain bodily states. The sight of a volcano In eruption, a 
huge conflagration, an earthquake, a battle, or a tiger 
out of his cage, will give a man feelings that do not visit 
him as he sits in dressing-gown and slippers by his own 
fireside. When suffering the pangs of hunger a man 



I20 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

will think, feel, and act rather differently from what he 
would do after a good dinner. Richard in love, or 
drunk, is a different creature from Richard cool and 
sober. Is psychology to be subdivided accordingly? 
Does the individual soul disappear in each of these in- 
stances, to be replaced by a new soul conditioned by vol- 
cano, conflagration, earthquake, battle, or encounter 
with a tiger, by hunger, love, or intoxication? Yet the 
assumption of the so-called disappearance of the indi- 
vidual in the crowd, and the rise of a new crowd-soul, 
Is on the same level as these suppositions. To under- 
stand the feelings, thoughts, and actions of a crowd, one 
must penetrate beyond it to the Individual. It is neces- 
sary to investigate his intellectual structure, and its 
reaction to any sort of excitement. The part played by 
his imitative faculty and receptivity to suggestions must 
be understood, no less than the instincts that slumber 
hidden in his soul, until something removes the bounds, 
conscious and unconscious, within which they are nor- 
mally restrained, and they then burst forth tremen- 
dous. 

This purely individual psychology Is not advanced in 
the least by subordination to any so-called psychology 
of the crowd, which endows the mere word " crowd " 
with actuality, and bestows upon a figment of the 
Imagination the qualities of a living being. In the same 
way verbal abstractions, such as wisdom, love, and pity, 
are personified by the artistic imagination and repre- 
sented In the female form with all sorts of attributes. 
The psychology of the crowd is the psychology of an 
abstract concept based In fact upon a number of indi- 
viduals. Either it has no material at all, or, since its 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY 121 

material consists of individuals, it must become indi- 
vidual psychology. 

The psychology of nations, which was believed by its 
founders, Lazarus and Steinthal, to be a new and fruit- 
ful science, is as fallacious as the psychology of the 
crowd. Throughout long periods of time and all the 
vicissitudes undergone by their government, religion, 
and habits in the course of history, nations — or, at least, 
some nations — display certain permanent intellectual 
and moral characteristics that make successive genera- 
tions of their people like one another and unlike other 
nationalities. Upon this proposition Lazarus and Stein- 
thal base all their views and hypotheses. But the prop- 
osition itself is highly disputable. Is there, as a matter 
of fact, a difference between nations? Only the super- 
ficial observer will answer this great question off-hand 
with any assurance. The differences apparent at a first 
glance are of the most external character, such as 
language, dress, and social habits; go a little deeper, 
and you come to institutions, customs, methods of work, 
general views of life, standards of value, objects of as- 
piration. But the inner life of man lies beyond such dif- 
ferences as these, and remains unaffected by them; and 
in the common attributes of humanity, in which all men 
are alike, feeling, will, reason, and action, there is some- 
thing far more fundamental than these superficial dif- 
ferences between nationalities. The Italian proverb 
which says " The whole world is like one family," comes 
far nearer to hitting the nail on the head than the pro- 
found endeavours of Lazarus and Steinthal to discover 
sharp differences at every turn. Exception may be 
taken, moreover, to the second half of their proposi- 



122 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

tion. Is it a fact that, in the whole course of its history, 
each nation preserves a mental and moral physiognomy 
that gives it a defined individuality throughout hun- 
dreds and thousands of years? There are insuperable 
difficulties in the way of a conclusive answer. We have 
no reliable knowledge of the thoughts and feelings of 
the mass of the people in the remote or even in the 
recent past. Such evidence as exists is capable of vari- 
ous interpretation. Literature, laws, art, reflect the 
activity of a small minority or individual persons only; 
they tell us nothing of the masses. In the artistic de- 
lineation of a national character, that is supposed to 
have been the same throughout centuries, the principal 
part is played by preconceived notions of a subjective 
kind. This constructive psychology is not usually ap- 
plied to small nations without any history, but to the 
more eventful and changing story of great nations. 
Given a certain parti pris, a certain object to govern the 
representation, rich history affords the artist in mosaic 
plenty of material for any picture he please. With a 
little sophistry it would not take much time or trouble to 
deduce two entirely different sets of characteristics for 
any nation selected at will. Fortified with examples 
from its history, the uncritical reader would swallow 
them both, though there would not be a word of truth 
in either. The method, or trick, is simple enough. By 
selecting certain events from the mass, and grouping 
them together to the exclusion of others. It is always 
possible to present a nation throughout long periods of 
time in the aspect in which one sees it oneself and desires 
to present it to others. 

What, then, is the basis of the special character and 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY 123 

temper of a people? Is It physiological inheritance and 
a common descent? Of the great European nations 
with which the would-be science of national psychology 
has hitherto busied Itself, not one shows a pure strain; 
there Is a mixture of blood In all of them. All are com- 
posed of the same elements In different proportions. 
Why, then, should a mingling of the early European in- 
habitants of the Alps and Mediterranean have pro- 
duced, as In France, a national character and soul 
different from that produced by the later Celts, Ger- 
mans, and Romans In West and South Germany? The 
special physiognomy of a nation. In so far as It possessed 
one different from those of other nations, could not con- 
sist of such Inherited characteristics as are organic, 
inborn and unchangeable, but of those externals that 
can be acquired and laid aside, and are thus capable of 
change. The notion of a special national individuality 
and physiognomy is, however, entirely In the air, one of 
those facile generalizations that lie at the root of so 
many errors and prejudices. The story of the English- 
man who was waited upon In the Inn, to which he went 
on landing at Calais, by a humpbacked chambermaid 
with red hair, and wrote In his diary, " French women 
have red hair and are humpbacked " — this story is a 
joke. But the dignity of science Is claimed by the so- 
called psychologists who declare, on the evidence of a 
few Attic painters and sculptors, that " the ancient 
Athenians were a people of artists"; on the evidence of 
the suicide of Lucretia, "the women of early Rome 
were so chaste that they preferred death to dishonour " ; 
on the evidence of Voltaire, " that the French are bril- 
liant and frivolous "; on the evidence of the poet-Prince 



124 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

of Weimar and the school of Kant, FIchte, ScheUIng, 
and Hegel, " that the Germans are a people of thinkers 
and poets." 

Lazarus and Steinthal looked upon the varieties of 
language as one of the strongest proofs of the organic 
differences between nations, and they lavished an enor- 
mous amount of ingenuity in tracing them back to, and 
regarding them as the direct expression of, national 
differences of thought and feeling. Their analysis of 
language as the expression of character is the most 
striking part of their work, for which it seemed to 
provide a really scientific basis. As a matter of fact, 
the argument is particularly insecure. Most of the 
languages spoken to-day were not created by the peoples 
who use them. For example, the Latin languages are 
spoken in Italy by Ligurians, Etrurians, and inhabitants 
of Northern Africa; in France by Celts and Germans; 
in Belgium by Walloons; in Spain by Iberians and 
Semites. The Slav language is spoken by the Turko- 
Tartaric Bulgarians and the Mongolian races of Russia ; 
German is spoken by the Slavs in Mecklenburg, Lausitz, 
and the Mark, and by the Celts in the Rhine Valley; and 
so on. Although, for the most part, we know nothing 
of the prehistoric struggles, in the course of which some 
languages conquered and others were thrust aside, there 
is no doubt as to the fact of nations giving up their own 
language and taking on another. But in such a case 
how can language be called the outcome and expression 
of a special national spirit? If it expresses the spirit 
of the people that has created it, it Is Incomprehensible 
that the spirit of an entirely different people should find 
adequate expression In It. On the other hand. In so far 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY 125 

as the language can be adapted so as to form the entirely 
adequate expression of the spirit of any nation, or of a 
number of nations of different origin, it is not essentially 
conditioned by the peculiar spirit of the one that created 
it. If one and the same garment fits different wearers 
equally well, only one logical conclusion is open — either 
the wearers are of the same build or the garment does 
not really fit them. If the most different races can 
express their thoughts and feelings with complete satis- 
faction through the medium of the same language, 
either those thoughts and feelings must be more or less 
the same, or the language must be so adaptable to any 
and every thought and feeling that it cannot in itself 
provide the key to understanding the special character 
of any one people. Language, then, is no proof of the 
existence of national character, no source for the so- 
called psychology of nations. 

At the same time different languages do exist which, 
though originally perhaps sprung from a single root, 
have developed according to different rules of pro- 
nunciation, grammar, and syntax. In the same way 
institutions and customs, though once, no doubt, the 
same for all mankind, have developed in many different 
directions. To investigate the causes of this variety of 
development is the right and the duty of any student of 
the human species, so long as he does not conceive that 
mere oracular utterance of the profound phrase " psy- 
chology of nations " Is an adequate explanation. It is 
convenient to say " Differences in language, religion, 
government, and social Institutions, In customs and 
moral ideas, depend on the differences of national char- 
acteristics and modes of thought deducible from them, 



126 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

and subject to little material change in the course of 
history." But- things are not so simple. On the one 
hand, descendants of a single race are seen dividing into 
several nations, widely differing in language, institu- 
tions, and customs; on the other, peoples, not demon- 
strably related by blood, are found speaking the same 
language and organizing their life on a common plan. 
These facts do not support the superstition that each 
people represents a race or type of the human species, 
possessing an organic character of its own, and in some 
sense a soul that determines the language, its policy, 
religion, etc., according to a certain norm. Rather one 
is inclined to see the types of human existence as deter- 
mined, not by any such mysterious organic peculiarity, 
but by the state of civilization which they have attained. 
This stage depends partly on the influences of the ex- 
ternal world, climate, condition of the soil, and natural 
resources, partly on less obvious circumstances. 

The gaps in this picture must be filled up by the 
psychology of the individual, not by the adventurous 
psychology of nations. Each individual has certain 
mental characteristics common to the type and its dis- 
tinguishing features. He is a creature of habit. He 
imitates what he has seen before him from his youth up. 
He is absolutely credulous unless a strong interest 
rouses his critical faculty. He loves the comfort of 
obedience to authority. A strong power of suggestion 
is exercised upon him by dogmatic assumptions. 

The national differences, for whose explanation Laza- 
rus and Steinthal invented the psychology of nations, 
can be fully accounted for by the undeniable character- 
istics of individual psychology. Some peoples write 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY 127 

from left to right, others from above downwards, 
others, again, from right to left; some burn their dead, 
others bury them, the position, again, varying between 
lying and squatting; some sit on the ground with their 
legs tucked under them, others on an elevated seat with 
a footstool and perpendicular back; some house under 
one roof with their animals, others apart from them; 
some dwell in straggling villages, others build in a circle. 
The reason is that they have always done so, and not 
otherwise, and see no reason for troubling to change 
their habits and discover new ones. And the same ex- 
planation holds of the higher range of peculiarities — 
speech, institutions, mental development generally. Of 
course, one may ask. How did the custom originate in 
the first instance ? This difficulty presents itself at every 
attempt to reach the final cause of any set of facts. The 
psychology of nations does not settle it. A more il- 
luminating suggestion is that all such habits as have not 
arisen directly out of the conditions of the external 
world date from the appearance of isolated individuals 
of sufficient creative power to discover something new 
and impose it on their fellow-men. Such mythical 
figures float vaguely in the recollection of mankind — 
Cadmus, Prometheus, Minos, Thor, Moses, or the 
divine heroes of whom Carlyle speaks in his first lecture 
on " Hero Worship." Two such heroic personalities 
fall almost within our own generation — Napoleon and 
Bismarck. The full light of history falls upon their life 
and activity, and reveals It to the intelligent under- 
standing as a politico-sociological experiment on a 
gigantic scale. Within one generation a complete trans- 
formation can be seen taking place, in each of these two 



128 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

instances, in the whole mode of thought of the upper 
stratum of society of two powerful nations. The peace- 
loving Frenchman of the eighteenth century, inclined 
to cosmopolitan views, and enthusiastically proclaiming 
Rousseau's doctrine of Liberty, Equahty, Fraternity, 
was filled with Chauvinistic Imperialism of the most ad- 
vanced type, drunk with glory, and revelling in the poetry 
of war. At the same time the sentimental, comfortable 
Germans of the Holy Roman Empire and the Confed- 
eration, rather petty and bourgeois in their ideas, and 
with little unity among them, disappeared, and in their 
stead there rose up the new Pan-Germanism, proud, 
hard and self-sufficient — or, at least, harsh and arro- 
gant — bent on spreading its power over the world. 
What can national psychology make of this? What 
becomes of its fundamental notion of permanent na- 
tional characteristics ? The most prominent traits in the 
upper classes in France and Germany are certainly the 
fruit of the influence of two towering personalities — 
Bismarck and Napoleon — and not of any peculiarities 
of the French and German nations as such. This ex- 
ample justifies the conclusion that all similar peculiari- 
ties of a people or group of peoples arise in the same 
way — as the effect of some powerful individual, un- 
known to us, because partly prehistoric. 

The psychology of nations has adduced no trait that 
is an organic fact, such as the brain index, bodily struc- 
ture, colour of skin, hair, and eyes. As a matter of fact, 
the child of one people, brought up, educated, and 
dwelling In the midst of another, far from disturbing 
or alien influences, will display all the peculiarities of 
that other. If any proof be needed, it is enough to 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY 129 

mention the names of Chamlsso and De la Motte 
Fouque, Germans; Gambetta, Spuller, Waddington, 
Frenchmen; Becker and Hartenbusch, Spaniards; Ar- 
turo Graf, Italian; Petofy (Petrovltsch) , Magyar. 
The psychology of nations has no more real existence 
than the psychology of the crowd. 

The real thing Is the psychology of the Individual, 
which teaches how man copies the world around him 
and regularly exercises his Imitative faculty In every 
direction. This Is one of the fundamental facts of his- 
tory. Man is born with certain simple Impulses, and 
grows completely Into the external conditions around 
him. He therefore appears to display national charac- 
teristics so long as he bears the single Impress of a 
certain set of conditions — so long, that Is, as he remains 
at a stage of culture removed from the Influence of 
active intercourse. This particularity is lost so soon as 
the individual is no longer rooted In the soil, when 
goods and ideas begin to circulate freely between peo- 
ples, and mutual influences overcome the barriers 
between states and the differences of language. To-day 
one hears already of the spirit of " Western and Central 
Europe," and European civilization is constantly spoken 
of; to-morrow the conception will be widened, and we 
shall talk of the soul of the white races. Nor can even 
this limitation be long maintained. Japan, India, and 
China are every day entering more fully into the Intel- 
lectual life of the whites, and becoming Imbued with 
their culture, methodology, ethics, and cesthetlcs. The 
Maoris of New Zealand don the frock-coat and var- 
nished boots, and, with the Republicans and Socialists of 
Hawaii and the Philippines, begin to follow fast in the 



I30 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

footsteps of their yellow brethren, while Booker Wash- 
ington seeks the admission of the negro to the cultured 
life. When complete intercommunication is estab- 
lished throughout all countries and races, and differences 
removed and universal similarity effected by the mutual 
interpenetration of civilizing forces, the conceptions of 
race and its psychology will cease to have any semblance 
of significance. A psychology of mankind will then be- 
come inevitable. We shall simply, after a wide detour, 
be brought back to the psychology of the individual. It 
will be seen that, morbid disturbances apart, men possess 
a common spiritual foundation over and above the 
individual differences caused by greater or less promi- 
nence of certain traits. The explanation of the fact that 
large groups appear to possess decided characteristics of 
their own. In so far as It Is not due to the Illusion of a 
prejudicial or superficial observer, lies simply and solely 
In the stage of civilization attained by them, and the 
decisive influence of example upon them. A super- 
psychology has no more existence than a super-soul. 
The collective organism Is a mystical delusion. Col- 
lectivity Is an abstract Idea. Life and actuality are 
found only In the study of the Individual. From the 
study of his feeling, thought, and action the natural 
history of the human species may be learned, and the 
results of such study are more reliable when devoted to 
the living than to the dead, of whose minds we are more 
Ignorant than of those of our contemporaries and our- 
selves. 

It Is natural to us to desire the most complete and 
accurate knowledge of the species to which we belong. 
The means to such knowledge Is observation, wholly 



ANTHROPOMORPHIC VIEW OF HISTORY 131 

without bias, of the individual, and his reaction to the 
manifold influences to which he is subjected from birth 
to death. History may be a form of such fruitful ob- 
servation as this, if it be retrospective sociology, in the 
sense in which I have tried to define it. I mean by 
sociology the exploration of the psychology of the indi- 
vidual, wherein lie the instincts and norms of human 
actions, and the origin of the institutions created by man 
as the framework of his Hfe, or adopted by him because 
they existed and he sees no reason or no possibility of 
escaping from them. To a certain extent the particular 
individual selected for observation is indifferent, always 
provided that a sufficiently large number are observed 
to establish securely which traits are common to them 
all and which represent a divergence, more or less fre- 
quent or even unique, from the universal human 
formula. Theoretically, a complete anthropology could 
be built up upon absolute knowledge of living man. 
Practically, however, this absolute knowledge is unat- 
tainable. Gaps and obscurities there always are here 
and there, and, moreover, understanding of existing 
conditions is assisted by knowledge of those that have 
preceded them — ^that is, of their simple origins and 
their development, through increased complexity, differ- 
entiation, and automatism. History, therefore, cannot 
be omitted from a complete anthropology. Political 
and biographical history has a place side by side with 
primitive history and the history of morals in a com- 
plete anthropology, in so far as it throws light on events 
which are accompanied by unusual reactions, such as do 
not occur In every generation, and upon the extraordi- 
nary possibilities of mankind as displayed in remarkable 



132 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

personalities, such as could hardly be suspected from the 
average type. To assist this knowledge of the type by 
striking examples is the object of history, which should 
be a museum of pre-eminent individual specimens, and a 
record of the behaviour of aggregates under circum- 
stances that permit the peculiarities of the type to be 
clearly observed. In so far as it is anything else, or has 
any other object, it may possess aesthetic value as a work 
of art, but is wholly useless for science, and can be neg- 
lected by the student who aims at knowledge of the 
human species. 



CHAPTER IV 

MAN AND NATURE . 

Mankind to-day appears to the observer as the highest 
and most powerful species on the earth; the globe is 
subject to man, and completely dominated by him all 
over its solid surface. The sea escapes him, but fish- 
eries off the coast, in the shallows and the deep sea, 
give him control over some at least of its fauna. On 
the continent and in the air only those animal and plant 
species are permitted to live which are useful, if only to 
provide an aesthetic satisfaction, or at least harmless. 
Anything actually harmful, anything that demands 
precious space, is ruthlessly exterminated. Everywhere 
the beasts of prey that were once dangerous to man, and 
to some extent still are so in India and Central Africa, 
have had to retire before him. Unable to maintain 
themselves, they will disappear within a measurable 
space of time, despite sentimental efforts to maintain a 
few of them under the protection of man and preserve 
them for show. The smaller species that, without 
directly attacking man, are troublesome to him by 
reason of their numbers, proximity, or offences against 
his property, lie also under sentence of death. War has 
been declared on the rat, and In many places on the 
migratory cricket. It may be long and tedious, but 
there Is no doubt as to the Issue. The smaller the 

133 



134 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

enemy or disturber of the peace, the more difficult is it 
for man to make an end of him. Tigers and hons are 
easily overcome; greater difficulties are presented by 
poisonous snakes, rodents, and insects. In wood and 
field to this day he is more afraid of the wood^scarab 
and the weevil, the moth and the spider, the locust 
and the phylloxera, than the wild-cat, wolf, or planti- 
grade, and finds it more difficult to defend himself 
against the attacks of the anophelae, stegomyia, and 
glossina which visit him with the scourge of intermittent 
fever, yellow fever, and sleeping sickness, than against 
the claws and teeth of animals of more considerable size. 
Even after he has cleared off the surface of the earth all 
the competitors visible to the naked eye, or subjected 
them wholly to his will, he will have to fight for safety, 
health, and life with microscopic enemies. In this 
contest he has to take the defensive ; it will be far more 
protracted and far more difficult than any other he has 
waged all his earthly existence and struggle for mastery 
on this planet. Long after the jungle Is as safe as the 
high street of a big town, man must walk In terror of 
tuberculosis, syphilis, cancer, leprosy, cholera, and other 
diseases caused by fungi and protozoa. But in the end, 
and that In no Impossibly remote future, he will conquer 
even these foes. He cannot, indeed, exterminate them 
— the saprophytes will always be able to elude him, but 
he can keep at a distance those that cause disease. Then 
the continued existence of animal and plant will be 
determined by his good pleasure, the surface of the 
earth will be his, and man his only living enemy. 

He has not always occupied this dominant position 
on the earth. Before his time it was Inhabited by 



MAN AND NATURE 135 

mightier beings, whose fragmentary remains fills him 
with amazement and horror — the land and sea species 
of megalosaurus, which devoured animals and plants; 
the monstrous early mammals; the terrible primeval 
cats, with teeth that tore like swords ; the racial ancestors 
of the beasts of prey, some of which existed within the 
lifetime of man. After these mighty organisms, that 
developed freely amid natural conditions that for them 
were highly favourable, man made his appearance, 
miserably small and weak in comparison with the bron- 
tosaurus or dinoceras, and insignificant by the side of 
the machasrodus, that had the graceful form and pro- 
nounced colouring of the tiger. No physical attribute 
marked him out as the future conqueror of his prede- 
cessors and sole ruler upon the earth, except the com- 
paratively large brain that set even the monkey-man 
above all earlier animal forces. 

Man's original position was that of all those who 
shared the earth with him. He was cradled in condi- 
tions that favoured his life and development. Other- 
wise, had such conditions not been present, his species 
could never have arisen at all. He found the degree 
of heat, the meteoric conditions, and other comforts 
necessary to him, and he was well pleased. For him, 
as for all other creatures, nature spread her table with 
meat and drink for the trouble of taking. His only 
care was to protect himself against the superior foes 
whose quarry he was. Had these natural conditions 
remained unchanged, It may safely be assumed that man 
would never have risen above the stage of the larger 
apes to-day, In spite of the possibilities, obviously latent 
within him, starting, as he did, at the end of a line of 



136 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

development characterized by a slow but continual in- 
crease in the proportion borne by the nervous tissue to 
the rest of the bodily structure. Certainly nothing is 
known of man in his earliest stages; but it can be 
unhesitatingly maintained that nature stood his friend 
and ally from the moment of his first appearance upon 
earth, while, like all the other creatures on earth, air, 
or water, he had enemies to face in the animals among 
whom he lived. But in the course of periods of time, 
whose duration cannot be exactly measured, this con- 
dition of things was changed, either gradually or rap- 
idly. Over a great part of the area he lived in the 
climate changed profoundly from tropical or subtropical 
to arctic or semi-arctic. At the same time the relation 
of man to the surrounding world was transformed. 
Nature, his mother and friend, became his most deadly 
enemy. To defend and protect himself against her 
he had to turn to his fellow-creatures, and treat them 
no longer as prey after the fashion of the wild beasts, 
but as fellow workers and servants. 

Climatic change did not affect man alone. It swept 
away all the other organisms that had shared with him 
the warmth of perpetual summer and found it necessary 
for their existence. Those to whom nature no longer 
supplied this essential element either went under or 
made great efforts to adapt themselves physically to new 
conditions, and succumbed after some struggle when 
they failed to do so. They grew a closer and warmer 
coat of fur; they altered their organs for biting and 
chewing so as to feed in a new way; they adopted new 
habits such as hibernation, breeding at certain seasons, 
and migrating at certain times ; and as a result emerged 



MAN AND NATURE 137 

from their affliction very different creatures, accom- 
modated to the new conditions of their natural exist- 
ence. 

Man, and man alone of living creatures, neither sub- 
mitted to the sentence of death pronounced by nature 
against all the creatures to whom she denied the means 
for continued existence, nor directed his efforts to alter 
his corporeal organization to suit murderous natural 
conditions. He made some alteration in his diet, took 
to eating meat instead of the fruits, roots, eggs, jelly- 
and shell-fish that were natural to him ; but in essentials 
he remained unchanged. He did not grow a fur coat. 
On the contrary, he lost the covering of hair that had 
not been a protection against the cold so much as a 
means of strengthening his skin and preserving it 
against insects, sunburn, and rain, and perhaps of adorn- 
ing it. He did not harden himself to bid defiance to the 
open weather, after the fashion of the beasts of the 
fields and of the woods. He did not strain after the 
m-ane and claws of the lion, the iron muscle and com- 
plicated digestion of the cud-chewing ox. On the 
contrary, he invented a mode of adjustment surpassing 
the ingenuity of any previous creature on the earth. 
Instead of altering himself, he directed his efforts to 
the alteration of external conditions. Instead of trying 
to fit his organism Into an environment that had become 
incompatible with his needs, he tried to adapt that 
environment to his organism and its needs. 

This new and peculiarly human method of adjustment 
is still going on, and will probably never cease. It is 
incessantly becoming more delicate, skilful, and com- 
plete; all man's gifts are devoted to it; It is, as a matter 



138 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

of fact, the sole distinct meaning which the impartial 
observer can discern in the course of history; it deter- 
mines all human events that are determined by the will 
of man rather than the order of nature. According to 
all biological laws, man should have disappeared from 
the surface of the earth with the first Ice Age, just as 
every other living thing before him vanished so soon 
as the free gifts of nature no longer satisfied its organic 
needs. But he maintained himself in defiance of nature. 
Instead of submitting, he advanced resolutely to the 
combat. His survival is a rebellion against the sen- 
tence of death pronounced against him, and still valid. 
Only a small tract around the equator affords him pro- 
tection and an asylum from her pursuit — that region 
which is the last refuge of this kind of men — the greater 
apes — who once inhabited the whole earth, but now are 
driven back into the tropical forests. There, too, a 
few branches of the human race — Australians, Weddas, 
Central Africans, and perhaps the Indians and Bra- 
zilians of Central America — could live in very nearly 
the primitive existence of our forefathers, but for the 
pressure exercised upon them by more developed races. 
As it is, spurred by no incessant pressure of necessity 
to exercise constant exertion, they have remained com- 
fortable and, from their own point of view, happy in 
the primitive condition of mankind; they have escaped 
the progress imposed on less favourably situated races. 
But outside this zone — all that is left of the earthly 
paradise — nature denies to man all that he requires, as 
Rome denied it to the proscribed. Everywhere, and 
at every hour, he has to wrest from her the necessities 
of existence with his own hands. From birth to death 



MAN AND NATURE 139 

he surrounds himself with artificial conditions; if he 
neglects them for a moment, his life is in imminent 
danger. His body has to be protected. In very warm 
climates, clothing, like tattooes and scars, the various 
ornaments in nose and lips, the hanging of trinkets 
round the neck, on breast and limbs, may have origi- 
nated as a form of adornment and distinction; but in 
colder latitudes the covering of the body was mainly 
due to the necessity of keeping warm. Man makes 
his supreme discovery, never surpassed or equalled — 
the kindling and keeping up of fire. With its aid he 
secures the degree of warmth helpful and agreeable 
to him, which the chemical action of his own cells 
cannot provide; by using fire in the preparation of his 
foods he simplifies digestion, and is enabled to extract 
nutriment of various natural kinds that he could not 
otherwise have enjoyed. Moreover, he acquires an in- 
strument that spares much expenditure of muscular 
strength, and makes possible exertions that muscle alone 
could not have accomplished. Many animals whose 
absolute needs are satisfied by nature need over and 
above a nest or shelter, and man most of all. He soon 
ceased to depend on the holes which he found ready 
made, and began to dig out or build up roofs and walls. 
In this way he secured, within his own small circle, that 
protection from the wind, that dryness and warmth, 
that the open air no longer afforded. He artificially 
created the climate that he thought suited him. With 
ever active inventiveness and ardent zeal, he wrested 
from his environment everything that it denied him, 
which he could not as yet do without. His whole ex- 
istence is as paradoxical as that of the diver in the 



140 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

depths of the sea. Destruction threatens It whenever 
one of the manifold precautions erected by man for his 
own preservation Is disturbed. Goethe's Homunculus, 
who can only live In the retort In which he was created, 
and must Instantly perish with the breaking of Its glass, 
appears one of the most far-fetched and unreal crea- 
tions of the poetic Imagination. As a matter of fact, 
it Is reality itself, a perfect symbol of the relations 
of man to nature. The artificial protections that enclose 
him are like the glass retort; if he emerge from them 
and stand, naked as he was born, face to face with 
nature, he must perish without hope, and descend to 
the fossils which once lived and flourished so long as 
nature permitted, and disappeared without a struggle 
when warmth and nourishment were withdrawn from 
them. 

Deep within man's subconsciousness there lurks a 
shadow perception of his unnatural relation to his en- 
vironment, which finds vague expression in myths and 
Imaginative inventions. Is not the " Land of Cock- 
ayne " simply a picture of the existence once natural 
to man, the existence of every other living thing except 
himself? Does not the caterpillar find In a nut a 
whole mountain of spices that tastes to it more delicious 
than millet pap does to man? Does not the spider 
find the little animals that slide down into Its gullet 
as tasty as any pigeon? A pigeon is always thought 
of as roast by man, and nature never provided It in 
that form. But man's imagination works on a basis 
of ideas developed from his artificial existence. He 
forgets that in the real land of Cockayne pigeons were 
not roast, soup was not cooked, pigs not made into 



MAN AND NATURE 141 

sausages or eaten with knives and forks; there man 
enjoyed everything In the state In which It was pro- 
vided by nature, without any alteration or preparation. 
When he really wishes to rise to great heights of fancy, 
he pictures a land flowing with milk and honey. He 
longs for an existence without labour — the exact oppo- 
site of the reality that he knows and sees In every human 
life. Labour, his dally habit, his constant experience, 
and the command laid upon him from the cradle to 
the grave, never appears in his dreams; It Is banished 
from the vision Inspired by his thirst for bliss. Al- 
though In this dream of happiness he sees himself 
surrounded, not only by the delights that nature can 
offer, but by all the products of labour — palaces, gor- 
geous raiment, rich vessels, spicy dishes, and women 
beautifully attired — it does not occur to him that since 
these creations must be someone's work, his land of joy 
cannot be open to all; his happiness is based upon the 
effort and abstinence of others, and therefore Involves 
exploitation and cruelty. This Is natural enough, since 
his Imagination Is using the material of experience, 
while entirely neglecting the law of causality that gov- 
erns reality. 

It is seldom realized that the contradiction between 
life and dream, the actual and the desired, that runs 
through the whole of human thought and feeling, repre- 
sents a half-unconscious recognition, a vague appre- 
hension of the unnatural conditions of human existence. 
If man dwelt under the conditions common to all other 
organisms on earth, his desires would be to prolong his 
habits and experiences there, not to reverse them and 
fly to something else. One would Imagine a lion's 



142 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

paradise, if he could imagine one, to be more success- 
ful hunting; a mole's, better meadow-land for burrow- 
ing In ; a stork's, to stand in the swamp and catch frogs. 
One would expect them to keep to the line of their 
customary activities. Man alone conceives of paradise 
as a spot in which he may escape from his usual ac- 
tivity. He alone pictures a golden age where Adam 
Smith's theory of labour as the source of wealth would 
be false. The Hebrew Bible, one of the earliest prod- 
ucts of the creative spirit, expressly designates labour 
as foreign to man's original nature, a visitation and 
punishment for his sins. The theory is remarkably 
profound, but the relation between guilt and labour an 
inverted one. Labour is not a consequence of sin, but 
sin a consequence of labour. In a state of nature man 
could not sin. He found his table laid; there was no 
one whose share of the goods of earth he need envy or 
take from him. It was the necessity of building up 
artificial conditions for the satisfaction of his needs, of 
exerting himself, of working, that led to that indiffer- 
ence to fellow-men in which all the acts and attempted 
acts that we call immorality, sin, guilt, crime, arose. 
Sin appeared in the world on the day when nature 
ceased to nourish, warm, and fondle man, and compelled 
him to choose between toil and extinction. 

I have described how this compulsion started man's 
intellectual development and explains the course of his 
history. At the same time I am not blind to the fact 
that the formula does not cover the whole field. It 
affords an adequate explanation of the low level of 
culture at which the peoples of the equator have re- 
mained, probably as a survival, down to the present, 



MAN AND NATURE 143 

of the original species. The spur of necessity has not 
touched them; they have not had to fight for their 
existence. But what about the people, say, of Terra 
del Fuego ? Towards them nature is as fierce an enemy 
as when the Ice Age set in. She tortures them with 
hunger, darkness and storms, and rains Intolerable blows 
upon them. They have no comfort. They live a 
miserable existence in which there is hardly any room 
for satisfaction. And yet they have done nothing to 
rise above their wretched lot. The enmity of nature 
has not roused them to defence. They have invented 
no protection like the civilization of other races. Nec- 
essity alone cannot, therefore, raise man to conquering 
independence ; there must be faculties within him which 
enable him to combat the hostility of nature effectively; 
and It Is obvious that these faculties are not present in 
all men to the same degree. But, because many have 
proved incapable of learning from necessity, It does not 
follow that it is false to assume, as the origin of all 
human development, the fact that unfavourable condi- 
tions have compelled man to be independent: but that 
there must have existed at a very early period Inequal- 
ities of natural endowment within the species, whose 
inheritance accounts for the origin of different races. 

An important question arises at this point, to which 
no answer can be given. What would have happened 
had the Ice Age not supervened, had the conditions 
under which the species originated lasted for ever, or 
altered so slowly that there would have been ample time 
for man to adapt himself to his new environment by 
purely physical changes, and no necessity to prolong 
his existence by artificial means? Would he have re- 



144 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

mained a beast? Would he, without external com- 
pulsion, by virtue of inward impulses alone, have risen 
above the level of the apes? The question has more 
than a merely human import: it includes the essential 
nature and significance of the universe as a whole. 

The question of the laws of human development is 
intimately connected with the question of the develop- 
ment of the world — its cause, its direction, its goal, its 
rhythmic movement — and to this vast riddle we can find 
no solution, for all our guessing. That the indispen- 
sable idea of the eternity of the universe is incompatible 
with the idea of development needs no proof. It is 
clear that development — a succession of events in time — 
must have a starting-point, a beginning, a continuation, 
and a climax. But in eternity no starting-point is pos- 
sible — one must always go back to eternity again. In 
eternity any chain of circumstances, however long a 
time it may have lasted, must, within eternity, have 
attained its most remote possible goal, and so be closed 
in. Eternity allows to human thought only the idea 
of eternal rest or of eternal cyclical movement. The 
only significance that could then be attached to develop- 
ment within the universe would be that of the eternal 
repetition of the process of differentiating simple con- 
ditions in terms of ever greater complexity and variety, 
and then simplifying the complexity and variety: the 
process that Herbert Spencer described as an unchang- 
ing and unvarying cycle of integration and dissociation. 
In a sense development does exist from the point of 
view of the mortal man enclosed within one of these 
eternally recurring cycles. He witnesses isolated phases 
of integration and dissociation, and can observe changes 



MAN AND NATURE 145 

that he may Interpret as progress or retrogression. But 
he never sees a whole cycle, far less a succession of 
cycles. He is so far justified, then, in rejecting the 
annihilating idea of an unchanging, eternal similarity 
In the universe, and finding. In his weakness, more profit 
and encouragement in the notion of development. 
Moreover, it is rational to assume that the course of 
development followed by our solar system, which has 
created the planets and their satellites out of primitive 
vapour, the cool solidity of the life-bearing earth from 
a fiery rain of cosmic drops, and highly differentiated 
mammalia and plants from unicellular organisms — that 
that course did not stop at the monkey-man, the pygmies 
of the Nyanza or the Weddas. On the contrary, we 
may assume that the forces that have gradually made 
vertebrates and animals in human form out of the 
worms would, under the most favourable conditions 
of natural existence, have finally developed primitive 
men to thinkers with mighty cranlums and brains weigh- 
ing from 1,800 to 2,000 grammes — men capable of 
all the knowledge to which we have attained to-day, 
although they might not have risen to our technical 
achievements, which would be unnecessary to them. At 
the same time, it Is highly probable that this advance 
would have proceeded incomparably more slowly than 
when existence Itself depended on adjustment to hostile 
natural conditions. This can be seen from the duration 
of the actual stages In development. The oldest mam- 
malia, monotremes, and marsupials appear in the keuper 
bed of the trias. In which the existence of men Is doubt- 
ful. The first certain date for their appearance is 
the quaternary epoch. The time between the trIas and 



146 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

the transformations effected by the floods covers cer- 
tainly tens — according to many geologists, hundreds — 
of millions of years; it was then that the life of man 
upon earth arose. Man remained in the first stage, 
if not for millions, at least for hundreds of thousands 
of years without making any visible progress. It was 
not till the first Stone Age that he began to emerge 
from a purely animal state. Then the first faint dawn 
of civilization begins. Traces of coal and ashes, marks 
of burning on bones, show that fire was beginning to be 
known; clumsy attempts at stone-carving mark the 
awakening of the creative faculty of the intellect. 
Maybe 100,000 years, or, according to Dr. Mortillet, 
238,000 years separate us from the man of Neander- 
thal; hardly more than 20,000 years from the man of 
Golutre, Le Moustier, Chelles, or Acheul. The man 
of Neanderthal was not, in all probability, subject to 
the necessity of fighting for his existence, but life had 
begun to be a hard struggle for the man of the earliest 
Stone Age. 

Let us now look back over the course of develop- 
ment, and observe its tempo. From the appearance of 
the first mammalia to the arrival of man, an incalcula- 
ble period, hundreds of millions of years. From the 
arrival of man to the last Ice Age, contemporaneous 
with the beginning of intellectual effort and its fruit, 
civilization, several hundred thousands of years. From 
the last Ice Age that affected man, and the first Stone 
Age, to the institution of organized political life in 
Asia and around the Eastern Mediterranean, about 
fifteen thousand years. From the earliest Assyrian and 
Egyptian monuments and inscriptions, down to the be- 



MAN AND NATURE 147 

ginning of really scientific knowledge, about seven thou- 
sand years. From the beginning of modern science 
and the utilization of natural forces on a large scale, 
which it rendered possible, down to the developed 
mechanics of to-day, with its use of the microscope, 
radiograph, and electricity, and its advanced physical 
and chemical powers, about a hundred years. Thus, 
to develop from an animal to Lavoisier took about 
twenty thousand years, from Lavoisier till to-day some- 
thing over a hundred. While the species probably 
remained in the condition of the men of the Neander- 
thal for some hundreds of thousands of years, is there 
anything rash or abitrary In the assumption that this 
immense acceleration of the rhythm of development was 
not merely contemporaneous with the sudden appear- 
ance of the last Ice Age, but conditioned by it? that 
without that alteration of environment man would not 
to-day have advanced much beyond the Neanderthal 
stage, and that the savages of the equator might repre- 
sent the most developed type? The supposition at any 
rate rests upon the fact that wherever nature has spread 
her table for man, and freed him from the necessity to 
provide shelter and clothing, he has remained at the 
lowest stage of culture and civilization. We may go 
further. Even if it be admitted that within the limits 
of the cyclical movement of the universe there exists in 
man, as in all other forms of life upon the planet, an 
impulse towards development that might have led him 
on to supreme knowledge even without the necessity of 
adaptation, such progress must have been extraordinarily 
much slower — so slow, indeed, that we may ask our- 
selves whether under such conditions the species would 



148 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

have survived its attainment. For It Is highly probable 
that the existence of the earth, or at least of its power 
to sustain hfe, is limited In time, and quite possible that 
it might reach the end of Its course before humanity 
had attained the goal of Its development. Thus, while 
gradual refrigeration had operated to accelerate man's 
intellectual growth, the disappearance of water and air 
would have destroyed a race whose instincts might have 
brought them to great heights In the domain of the 
creative Imagination, but not to rationalizing knowl- 
edge. Life on earth would then have come to an end 
without any scientific view of the world as a whole. 

We may leave these possibilities on one side. Experi- 
ence has established that, with the exception of the 
human species, no living thing can survive except under 
favourable natural conditions. If the conditions be- 
come unfavourable, they either adapt their physical 
organization to the change, or, if they cannot, perish 
Irretrievably. Man is the sole living thing upon the 
earth that refuses to be exterminated by an unfavour- 
able environment, and defends himself actively against 
nature by the invention of artificial conditions. Instead 
of adapting his skin, his digestive apparatus, and the 
means by which he moves from place to place, he con- 
fined himself to adaptation by his brain, the most highly 
differentiated part of his system. Why we do not 
know, and at the present stage of our knowledge it is 
bootless to inquire. Once for all we possess a brain 
relatively heavier and more efficient than that of any 
other creature; once for all we are the final stage of that 
process of development from the unicellular organism 
that had, by the last Ice Age, produced a creature capa- 



MAN AND NATURE 149 

ble, as it proved, of concentrated and sustained atten- 
tion. All that was required for success in the struggle 
for existence arose from this single capacity in man. 
Through his capacity to attend he learned to observe 
phenomena with understanding, and gradually to differ- 
entiate the permanent, and therefore essential, features 
from those that were transitory, and therefore inessen- 
tial. Through it, too, he acquired the power of ab- 
stract thought, of generalization and logical deduction, 
comprehended the causal connection of events, and was 
able at the last to create conditions in which phenomena 
favourable to himself could appear. This was the test 
of the exactitude of his observation and the accuracy 
of his conclusions; it established his power; it enabled 
him to use for the maintenance, protection, and enrich- 
ment of his own existence some at least of those natural 
forces that would have destroyed him had he offered 
no resistance. 

A phenomenon unique since the formation of the 
globe was thus presented when one living species, man- 
kind, finding the conditions of existence offered by 
nature to be impossible, created artificial ones by means 
of a brain that warded off dangers, and facilitated, or 
even created, the satisfaction of its needs. Equally 
new was another phenomenon which developed from 
the first, and in close connection with it — parasitism 
within the species. Sycophancy is of frequent occur- 
rence in nature among plants as well as animals. One 
animal species will subdue another, and instead of de- 
stroying it for prey, or using It, as the ants do the wood- 
lice, for some sort of domestic service, make it work 
regularly for them as is again the practice of the ants. 



I50 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

Cannibalism is also practised, though it is exceptional, 
and comparatively rare. Certain insects, possibly cer- 
tain fishes, certainly murines and wolves, do eat their 
weaker or sickly fellows, independently of other food. 
On the other hand, man is the only creature who lives 
upon his fellows, and seeks the satisfaction of his needs, 
not from nature, but from other men; who directs his 
efforts rather to subjugating and systematically exploit- 
ing his fellow-men than to discovering natural resources 
for himself. 

This parasitic impulse is not a primitive instinct in 
man. It does not appear among the few tribes who are 
still living in a state of nature, with whom, accord- 
ing to the testimony of travellers, slavery and every 
form of personal service or ownership, theft, robbery, 
and murder with intent to rob, are alike unknown. It 
does not occur among apes. It is, in fact, incompre- 
hensible so long as the conditions of existence of the 
species are determined by nature. When nature is 
cook and waiter, the table she spreads for one Is spread 
for all, and no one can feel any desire to wrest from 
his neighbour by force or fraud what each can take from 
the common store without any struggle or hindrance. 
Beasts of prey go on the chase, singly or In packs, with- 
out expecting or desiring that anyone should do their 
hunting for them. We may assume that the activities 
necessary for the satisfaction of wants are, In the case 
of all creatures living under natural conditions, accom- 
panied by pleasurable sensations that would be unwill- 
ingly renounced. Primitive man himself would have 
preferred to weave his own roof of leaves, to bring his 
own foliage and moss to make his couch soft, gather 



MAN AND NATURE 151 

birds'-nests, and dig roots for himself, to having this 
done for him by others. But, when external conditions 
frowned upon him, he began to feel that, since nature 
no longer provided for him, it was pleasant that his 
fellow-men should do so. Parasitism arose by the oper- 
ation of the law of least effort. It is easier and pleas- 
anter to use the finished product of the work of others 
than to wrest raw material from nature; and it is 
obvious that when some men are weak, cowardly, and 
simple, less trouble, attention, endurance, inventiveness 
and ingenuity are needed to seize the necessities of life 
from them than to provide them for oneself. 

Parasitism thus arises out of the original inequality 
of men. All experience is against the belief, expressed 
by Plato in the " Republic," in the original equality of 
man. No example of equality between the individuals 
of a series or species is to be found among the heavenly 
bodies, or the material substances of which our earth is 
composed, among the crystals, or any order of living 
things. Aristotle rightly departs from this view of his 
master. He teaches that among men some are born to 
command, and others to obey. But in this statement 
cause and effect are confused. The faculties of com- 
mand and obedience are consequences of original in- 
equality. This inequality is the fundamental fact. 
From it the mutual relations of men have been devel- 
oped; in it almost all social institutions take their rise. 
Few of them serve for the exploitation of natural re- 
source, the great majority for the exploitation of the 
many by the few. By this fact the State, laws, even 
morals, and the course of human history have been de- 
termined. Any investigation which goes deeper than 



152 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

unimportant and misleading superficialities must recog- 
nize, as the determining factor in almost all historical 
events, this inequality among men, and the attempt on 
the part of a person or a nation to gain an advantage 
from the consciousness of it. 

The instinct of self-preservation exists In man, as in 
all other living creatures, and probably to an even 
stronger degree. This appears in his defiance of those 
unfavourable natural conditions to which all other 
species submitted, often without any attempt at resist- 
ance beyond generally immaterial corporeal adjustments. 
In consequence of man's unnatural way of life, the 
instinct itself has undergone such profound transforma- 
tions that it often appears so disguised that it is difficult 
to recognize it. The fierceness of the struggle for 
existence aroused a tendency to parasitism, as involving 
less effort than direct conflict with murderous nature. 
And parasitism, in Itself a special development of the 
Instinct of self-preservation, adapted to meet the hos- 
tility of nature, set up In its turn a number of secondary 
instincts that would have been useless to man had he 
lived under such favourable conditions as would have 
enabled him to satisfy his needs without trouble or 
effort, but were useful and even necessary when he 
must make his fellows servants of his will, and has to 
live by plunder and by sycophancy. 

Parasitism itself, in its original and crudest form, Is 
mere brutal violence — murder and robbery of the indi- 
vidual, the waging of war on a tribe or people. But as 
the forms of common life become more various and 
complicated, and the structure of society Is established 
and maintained by recognized rules and binding laws, 



MAN AND NATURE 153 

you no longer have the strong and courageous Individual 
looking upon his neighbour simply as his prey, and using 
him and his goods for the satisfaction of his own needs. 
Then there arises " the will to power," trumpeted 
abroad nowadays as a new philosophical discovery, but 
really only the old parasitism, the old perversion of the 
instinct of self-preservation, adapted to the circum- 
stances of civilized life under legal forms. 

The will to power is a secondary, not an original 
instinct. It does not appear in a state of nature. There 
the individual does not strive to rise above his fellows, 
or to mix with them from motives of pride, vanity, or 
ambition. Individuals of the same genus do not fight 
except about women — either because there are not 
women enough, or because in one place many men are 
found wooing the same woman. Then the strongest 
and bravest man drives his rivals from the field, and 
keeps the woman for himself; she apparently, as a rule, 
shows no particular preference, and yields without re- 
sistance to the conqueror. Out of the breeding season 
no animal strives for power. Man alone displays that 
striving, and parasitism is its object. His aim in seek- 
ing for power is the exploitation of the strength and 
capacity of other men. He need not necessarily be 
conscious of this. During the struggle for power he 
may believe that he seeks it for its own sake. The in- 
toxication of power, the sense of pleasure aroused by 
Its possession, do not necessarily include any recognition 
that It only serves, in the last resort, to save him from 
the struggle with Inhospitable nature, and maintain his 
existence by means of the efforts of others. Such un- 
consciousness of the real object of effort Is a psycholog- 



154 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

ical fact frequently observed. The vanity which strives 
to please, to make an impression, or to rouse envy; the 
ambition which sets before itself the higher aim of rising 
above the others, compelling them to recognize a superi- 
ority, and determining the thoughts, behaviour, and 
actions of thousands of millions of persons by its single 
will, while it is yet generally satisfied with a fame which 
is but the vain reflection or phantom of real power over 
men — both of these are but distorted forms of the will 
to power, which in its turn is, as I have shown, only 
the will to parasitism. 

The unfavourable conditions under which man is con- 
demned to carry on his existence upon earth have thus 
transformed the instinct of self-preservation, common 
to all living things, into the tendency to parasitism, 
peculiar to himself alone. As long as he was the free 
guest of nature he would never have troubled to try to 
please Eve or anyone else; he would have felt no am- 
bition, no striving after power. But when his free food 
ceased, observation showed him that his best and easiest 
plan was to take possession of the implements, traps, 
hunting and huts of his weaker fellows, and thus win 
by one brief effort all that the others had obtained by 
long and toilsome diligence. His original battle in- 
stinct, naturally aroused only by desire for a particular 
woman already sought by many wooers, was diverted 
from its first object, and developed in another direction. 
It was soon aroused by any and every desirable or useful 
object, and so whatever could satisfy any human need 
aroused mutual struggles, of which woman was origi- 
nally the sole cause and prize. Although the battle 
instinct is no longer immediately connected with and 



MAN AND NATURE 155 

dependent on the sex instinct, it is to this day decidedly 
coloured by it. Psychological investigation, if it go 
deep enough, will discover the battle instinct to be 
rooted in sex. The erotic strain visible in certain as- 
pects of the passionate lust of battle and the delight 
in victory is undeniable. Thus ambition, vanity, the 
will to power, all the impulses and efforts that are either 
admitted or felt to be parasitic, instead of being new 
instincts, are, as a matter of fact, merely the primitive 
desire of woman directed to a new end. It was from 
this that the battle instinct arose in man. Its object, 
instead of the winning of a woman, is now the subjuga- 
tion of and domination over others, and the exploitation 
of the fruits of their labour, but the unconscious con- 
nection with the sex instinct remains. In the intoxica- 
tion of victory it is always present, however obscure. 
Triumph as it presents itself to the imagination of the 
ambitious conqueror will hardly omit some faintly in- 
dicated female forms. 

Ancient poets like Ovid, and dogmatic sociologists of 
the subjective t)^e of J. J. Rousseau, who describe a 
golden age in the past, endow primitive man with all the 
virtues. But their exaggerated descriptions have little 
relation to actuality. It is more rational to assume that 
primitive man was neither good nor evil. There was 
no room for such moral conceptions as virtue and vice, 
or any moral judgments of human action, so long as all 
man's needs were supplied by nature. He was selfish 
with the innocent selfishness of the animal. His only 
care was to protect himself against the larger beasts of 
prey. His only bond of union with his fellows was the 
habit of playing and possibly of hunting together. His 



156 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

relations to his fellows did not alter until nature declared 
war upon him. Then, to accommodate himself to the 
new and toilsome way of life, he developed parasitism. 
" Man became a wolf to man " ; the weak learned to 
fear his brother, the strong to prey upon him. He 
paled and cringed before one who used violence against 
him, and felt drawn to one who left him alone. Good 
he called the one who did nothing against him, evil 
him who had designs on his life, goods, or strength. 

Thus the conceptions good and evil originally denoted 
the non-parasitic and parasitic respectively. Morality 
arose from the unnatural conditions of human existence, 
an inevitable result of the prison in which Homunculus 
is enclosed. Morality would not have been needed or 
acquired in the condition of delightful freedom enjoyed 
by the guests of the mythical paradise. Before men 
could conceive of actions as being good or evil, they 
must have suffered from the selfishness of their fellows, 
and felt the need of friendly succour. Only the weak 
have suffered and called for help; to them the origin 
of morality is due. The parasite could not possibly 
feel that there was anything reprehensible in his forcible 
exploitation of his fellows. That was left for the ex- 
ploited. A moral judgment of good and evil was, in 
its origin, a confession of weakness, a symbolic rejec- 
tion by the spirit of the violence which the body was 
not strong enough to resist. 

Morality has developed, widened, and deepened. It 
has risen to a degree of subtlety and grandeur that 
primitive man could not have understood. Oblivious 
of its origin, it no longer remembers that it once ex- 
pressed the terror of the hunted before the pursuer, the 



MAN AND NATURE 157 

Impotent hatred of the vanquished for the conqueror. 
Out of his own experience man learned to understand 
suffering, and to hate and condemn those who caused 
pain to others. In time this generalization mastered 
the thought of the strong, for whom It had no applica- 
tion. Thus the framework was created into which 
there fitted -all the further ramifications of morality — 
love of one's neighbour, self-control, and regard for 
human personality. 

Such is the progress of human development as It 
presents Itself to the unprejudiced and undogmatic 
observer. Towards the end of the tertiary or the be- 
ginning of the quaternary period the earth was inhab- 
ited by animal species, distinguished from all hitherto 
existing living forms by the relatively great weight of 
Its brain. At a given movement the climate of the earth 
altered. Nature deprived the favoured species of the 
very conditions of Its existence. The species, which 
was destined in the course of Its development to become 
mankind as It Is, joined battle with the hostile world, 
and emerged victorious, thanks to Its capacity for artifi- 
cial attention, observation, and correct inference. But 
the Individuals of which It was composed were unequal; 
there were among them strong and weak, clever and 
stupid. The better equipped soon saw that it was 
easier for them to exploit the less well endowed than 
to struggle with nature in their own persons. Para- 
sitism arose, and regulated relations within the species. 
The exploited then created the notion of morality, as a 
protection against the parasitism already in operation 
which threatened them all. Between parasitism and 
morality there Is an eternal warfare. Small successes 



158 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

are won, now by one side, now by the other. It Is by 
the action of these two mighty forces, the tendency to 
exploitation on the one hand, and on the other the angel 
of morahty with the flaming sword, putting his violent 
deeds to shame, that the external destinies of mankind 
are controlled. 



CHAPTER V 

SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 

It would be of the deepest Interest to know how the 
individuals composing the human species, who must 
certainly have originally been completely free and inde- 
pendent, came to sacrifice their freedom, and to form 
tribes, peoples, and states on a basis of mutual depend- 
ence. History has no information to give us. It did 
not arise until men had long ago been massed into fixed 
political bodies, and the individual of the original type, 
one subject to no external discipline, an anarchist in the 
root-sense of the word, had disappeared. The fact that 
there are no primitive records of a time before this 
ordering into regular bodies took place, not even any 
mythical recollection of it, has persuaded many that 
mankind, as a matter of fact, never did consist of dis- 
connected units ; that it was at its first appearance upon 
earth grouped in hordes; that the natural condition of 
its existence was a congregation of the larger units. 
It was hoped that this fundamental sociological question 
would be elucidated by observation of savages; as a 
matter of fact, the method is inadequate. Nowadays, 
and for a long time past, real savages have ceased to 
exist. No race on earth Hves completely apart, without 
any relation to the rest of the world. Such an isolation 
does not exist even on the little Islands of Micronesia; 

159 



i6o THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

even there some mutual intercourse exists. Men might 
have lived, remote from the world, on an isolated island 
In mid-ocean, far removed from any other island or 
from the mainland, but when such islands as Tristan 
da Cunha, Ascension, or St. Helena were discovered by 
Europeans in the course of the last centuries they were 
uninhabited. And even savage tribes do come In con- 
tact with one another, If only on their outposts, the 
boundaries of their territories. Although the encounter 
be hostile, mutual knowledge accrues, and the horizon 
of each is widened. In the course of long periods of 
time a kind of acquaintance with the conditions of re- 
mote lands spreads from race to race. Dim as this 
knowledge may be, subject to strange and mistaken 
interpretations. It does gradually carry some faint re- 
flection of the light that shines In civilized lands to 
savages that appear exceedingly lonely and remote from 
all intercourse with the world. Ideas, institutions, dis- 
coveries, and customs, are conveyed with a slow, yet 
irresistible, progress from the spot where they arise 
all over the world. Every nation or race appropriates 
what the stage of mental development it has reached 
enables it to retain. Thus the Influence extended to 
all is felt, whether deeply or superficially, by all. For 
thousands of years no section of humanity can have been 
entirely without cognizance of the formation of States 
and people going on in other lands, and the imitative 
Impulse common to the race has certainly assisted the 
spread of organized forms of common life. That sav- 
ages show a social disposition, and tend to live In some 
sort of society or state. Is a matter of observation, and 
proves, not that such social crystallizations are a primary 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL i6i 

characteristic of the species, but that no section of 
mankind can wholly escape the effect of the example of 
others. 

It is open to question whether historians and sociolo- 
gists were on the right track in endeavouring to under- 
stand the remote past of humanity, and the origins of its 
civilization from an examination of the views, habits, 
and customs of savages. In the first place, the name 
" natural " peoples, used to justify this method, is really 
not justifiable at all. All the peoples of the earth have 
long ago ceased to live under their primitive constitu- 
tion, and the condition of all of them, far from afford- 
ing any true picture of the primitive status of the race, 
represents a stage in civilization that, however low it be 
esteemed, is the outcome of many thousand years of 
creative and imitative effort. Secondly, conclusions 
drawn from the conditions of savages cannot be valid 
for humanity as a whole, since savages are the least 
gifted and most backward portion of the species, and 
their intellectual life throughout centuries has been quite 
different, and on a much lower plan, from that of the 
more highly endowed races. Of course, there was a 
time when there was little difference between the remote 
ancestors of the Germans, Englishmen, and Frenchmen 
of to-day and those of the Weddas, Nyam-Nyam, or 
New Guinea races. But they must have far surpassed 
their coloured fellows in brain, Invention, and the thirst 
for knowledge. They replied to the compulsion of 
nature by building up the whole fabric of civilization 
as It Is to-day. The coloured races, on the other hand, 
remained unintelligent and brutish, even In those locali- 
ties where they were subjected to the same climatic 



i62 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

disadvantages as the whites — e.g., North America, 
Northern Asia, and Patagonia — and were equally com- 
pelled to fight against the hostility of nature. Even in 
primitive times the world must have presented quite a 
different picture to the white man and to the coloured. 
The thought of a black Australian, a negro from the 
Congo, or an Indian from Gran Chaco cannot run on 
parallel lines with that of a primitive German or 
Chaldee. To try to understand the intellectual prog- 
ress of civilized man from the study of the savage is 
like trying to grasp the feelings, thoughts, knowledge, 
and action of a people from a study of its children and 
idiots. It should be expressly stated that there are 
to-day neither white nor yellow savages. Between the 
white and yellow races, indeed, there is little difference. 
They probably either sprang from one primitive stock 
or have been very considerably Intermingled. This 
seems to be proved by the fact, among others, that about" 
three per cent, of white children bear near the coccyx 
the blue mark that distinguishes the Mongolian race, 
while a Mongoloid physiognomy, that no doubt repre- 
sents a throw-back, is very corrimon among degenerate 
whites. When, therefore, we speak of savages or of 
natural peoples, we can at the present day Include only 
blacks and reds. From them no valid conclusion can 
be drawn as to the Intellectual capacity of mankind as a 
whole. Maoris may be prominent members of the 
New Zealand Parliament; Redskins may be successful in 
law, journalism, and business in North America. 
Negroes In the United States and Haiti may have 
acquired a scientific education, and occupied themselves 
with music and poetry. This only proves that the 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 163 

imitative faculty is a universal human attribute, in which 
black and red men are not deficient. All the instances 
adduced to prove that there is no difference in the 
intellectual capacity of the chief races are instances of 
more or less happy imitation. Creative activities, dis- 
coveries, or inventions have not as yet been credited to 
members of the black or red race. But the civilization 
which the white man has built up is no mere imitative 
game, however clever; it is a connected body of creative 
activities. 

No. Observation of so-called savages can teach us 
nothing of the being, ways, and primitive instincts of 
those men from which the highest type was to 
develop. 

A different method, which promises more certain 
knowledge, is the careful investigation of those innate, 
involuntary movements of the human soul, which per- 
sist in spite of education or culture. This method rests 
on the assumption that in every species, the human in- 
cluded, there are certain fundamental instincts that are 
as indestructible as Its anatomical form, and as little 
subject to transmogrification. I know that education 
can profoundly affect even what seems a fundamental 
instinct, as In the case of the cats of Ruhla, which no 
longer behave towards birds as beasts of prey. In such 
a case, however. It can be proved that the fundamental 
character, though overlaid, is not destroyed, and can be 
roused again by any influence strong enough to sweep 
away the overlay. Let us keep to our Instance. If one 
were to shut up a cat of Ruhla and a bird In a cage 
together, having provided the bird with plenty of seed 
but left the cat hungry, the moment would certainly 



i64 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

come when the cat would forget all its training and 
devour the bird, without delaying an instant to consider 
the pious duty of feeding on seed. Therefore, if our 
observation were protracted enough, attentive enough, 
and properly directed, we should see the wild hunter 
of birds through the changes that education had brought 
upon the cat. And such is doubtless the case with all 
fundamental instincts, including those possessed by man. 
In his natural state he gave way to them without any 
attempt at resistance. But when his existence became 
artificial, these instincts ceased to have full sway over 
him. The instinct of preservation, the mightiest of 
them all, overcame the others, or turned them aside 
from their natural aim. Many human instincts served 
as weapons in the fight with the surrounding world, and 
determined the form of the civilization that man cre- 
ated to assist him in the fight; others had to go under, 
and did not survive. They did not, therefore, dis- 
appear. They do persist, but deep down, chained in 
a dark prison, seldom lit by the uncertain light of 
consciousness. In which they mostly remain strongly 
guarded a whole life long. Yet sometimes they break 
loose, and the man who has thus failed to guard his 
prisoners passes for an eccentric, a criminal, a revolu- 
tionary — in a word, an abnormal, anti-social creature. 
It Is these suppressed Instincts that we have to discover. 
The task Is a thorny one. One must abandon the 
ordinary point of view — morality — since morality is the 
product of civihzation, and these primitive tendencies 
are prior to civilization, and therefore to morality. 
Moreover, one must free oneself from all the prejudices 
bred in us by thousands of years of social tradition. 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 165 

The task is to investigate nature, to establish facts, not to 
pass judgment; and since the only method that holds 
out any prospect of success is that of introspection — 
searching examination of the inner consciousness — the 
observer must have no presuppositions, he must not 
pose for a moment : he must regard himself with com- 
plete objectivity as a physical apparatus, and dismiss 
wholly from his mind all he may have heard or read 
as to the nature of man and the fundamental traits of 
his character, and all the opinions that he himself, as a 
moral and civilized being, may hold as to the praise or 
blame-worthiness of individual tendencies. Only so can 
he hope that, hidden beneath the superstructure raised 
by civilization, he may discover the strange ruin that he 
perhaps never expected to find there. The ruin may 
rouse disgust and uneasiness within him, he would may 
be gladly hide it from his own knowledge. He has, 
however, to recognize in it the primitive history of his 
existence. For a knowledge of the past of the species 
it is as important carefully to trace out the instincts that, 
in the healthy man, are ambiguous, tortuous, and over- 
laid as it is to investigate those bodily dispositions and 
organs that are now useless and rudimentary. These 
instincts are survivals, like the loop of the branchia in 
the neck of the embryo or the vermiform appendix. 
They witness to intellectual phylogeny. The question 
is how to interpret them correctly. For that one may 
have recourse, as in the case of anatomical atavism, to 
pathology and the comparison with related animal 
species. The morbid development of certain instincts 
in abnormal men may enable us to understand the bare 
Indications of such tendencies in normal men. Certain 



i66 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

conclusions as to the primitive nature of man may be 
drawn from careful observation of the ways and habits 
of the apes, who are nearer to us in the scale, so long as 
it is supplemented by a constant comparison with human 
traits. 

Such a method of observing mankind fills one with 
grave distrust of the old statement of Aristotle, that 
man is itoXitikov t^ov. " Man is a political animal," 
said the Stagyrlte, " born for association with other men ; 
he cannot attain either virtue or happiness as an iso- 
lated individual." Certainly not virtue, for Aristotle's 
virtue is a social good, and can, of course, have no 
value outside of society. But what about happiness? 
Of that Aristotle knows nothing, for he has in his eye 
only the man he knows, the child of civilization, who 
has grown up in the midst of society and the State, 
whose habits all depend on his relation to his fellow- 
men, without whom he could not Imagine existence. 
But what Aristotle has not proved Is that man Is by 
nature what he appears when living with others. On 
the contrary, everything points to the fact that man's 
natural state, before he was compelled to support life 
by artificial means, was not gregarious ; he did not Hve 
in herds, but as a solitary being. The solitary naturally 
strove to form one of a pair, since only then did he 
attain the individuality which satisfied all his organic 
possibilities, and rendered him, in the biological sense, 
complete. The apes, our nearest relations, do not natu- 
rally go in herds. The orang-outang, the gorilla, and 
the chimpanzee live in families, without any attempt at 
Intercourse with neighbours. In this respect resembling 
the large beasts of prey, who hunt alone, and only form 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 167 

pairs in the breeding season. Only the lower apes go 
in troops. F. H. Giddings brings forward no proof in 
support of his purely dogmatic assertion that man's 
animal ancestors were " social." In Giddings' sense 
present-day man is not social, as has been shown; Ward 
is undoubtedly on firmer ground in his denial of the 
existence of any " social feelings " at all. 

The old way of talking of the " political animal " 
and the " gregarious animal " is, moreover, discredited 
by the example of the ape. Attentive observation of 
basic human instincts leads to the same result — namely, 
that man is not a social, but a solitary animal. How 
closely in an organized society a man seems bound to his 
fellows ! How Inextricably are their interests inter- 
twined ! What a tremendously powerful impulse seems 
to draw each man to the companionship of his kind! 
It fills the reception-rooms in palaces — this instinct — - 
the public-houses and the tea-rooms, the bars frequented 
by the proletariate, and the buffets of the fashionable 
hotels, the theatres and the music-halls. It creates clubs 
and unions. It is one of the forces that draw people 
from the villages into the big towns. It is the basis of 
Society, with a big " S." It underlies the countless 
forms of daily intercourse of people of the same class 
and similar tastes. And yet it is all external, super- 
ficial; underneath it all, beneath the exclusive visiting- 
list of the smart lady, behind all those receptions, din- 
ners, balls, At Homes, aesthetic tea-parties, private 
banquet-halls and reserved tables at restaurants, there 
lurks, in the depths of the consciousness, a secret emo- 
tion that contradicts it all. Everyone who has passed 
the lowest stage of intellectual development shrouds 



i68 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

the more intimate aspects of his life from the view of 
others. Whether the conditions of his existence be 
simple or highly complicated, he conceals them, to the 
best of his ability, from the curiosity of his neighbours. 
Even at school, in the canteen, on board ship, or in 
the cloister, where a man cannot shut himself away, 
where every movement is observed, where the individual 
is most completely absorbed into the community, even 
there every man guards a secret that he shares with 
none. One often hears it said: "The life of this or 
that man lies like an open book before the eyes of all." 
This statement must never be taken literally. There 
are always stray pages that cannot be turned. What 
a man hides from the world is not necessarily anything 
bad, anything of which he need be ashamed. It is 
only that he will never reveal himself fully, never 
expose himself to view on every side, because of some- 
thing within him that shrinks from such complete pub- 
licity. In the depths of every soul there is a shyness, 
a shamefacedness, that represents a still, but enduring, 
protest against social life — life in the herd. Every 
soul is a world of its own, and maintains its isolation 
with desperate earnestness. The gates open but a nar- 
row chink. The outsider never gets farther than the 
anteroom. The inner chambers remain for ever closed 
to him. Countless persons have recorded their own 
lives. Is anyone so uncritical as to believe that they 
have been quite honest? Even in the autobiographies 
that are by way of being full confessions, such as the 
twelve books of the " Confessions " of St. Augustine, 
or the " Confessions " of J. J. Rousseau, the author is 
almost always unconsciously, and frequently even con- 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 169 

sclously, posing. Even here an impenetrable dusk 
shrouds the real bases of personality. 

Everyone's first impulse on meeting an unknown 
fellow-creature is shyness, caution, mistrust, even en- 
mity. Habit dulls these feelings. They retreat across 
the threshold of consciousness, but never wholly dis- 
appear. This is not contradicted by the fact that men 
seek one another out, find pleasure in one another's 
society, and try to attract others to themselves. Here 
all sorts of secondary interests come into play — the 
vanity that loves to shine before others, ambition that 
would make use of them, self-aggrandisement that aims 
at exploiting them. The thousand complexities of an 
artificial, civilized existence bind every individual mem- 
ber of a community with threads that are strong for all 
their fineness, and leave him no longer free to follow 
his impulses. The mutual cordialities of social life are 
cut flowers ; their stalks are stuck in the earth, but they 
have no roots there. Relations between men are not 
the outcome of a primitive Impulse, but of a late de- 
veloped utilitarianism. Were man really a gregarious 
animal, he would feel himself irresistibly drawn to his 
fellows; his relations to them would know no reserve; 
he would never withdraw into himself, and try to 
keep his inner self curtained away, nor ever feel an 
irresistible need for solitude and a retreat within 
himself. 

Against the theory that man, like the ape, Is not 
naturally a social, but a solitary, being It may be urged 
that his undeniable tendency to feel distrust and shyness 
of his fellows Is a late, and not a primitive Instinct, 
only developed when he was compelled to live under 



I70 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

artificial conditions, and consequently to become para- 
sitic. 

Since from that time on man inevitably saw in every- 
one, until the contrary was proved, a parasite and 
exploiter — that is, an enemy — his instinct of self-preser- 
vation put him on his guard against his fellows, and 
taught him to fear and avoid them. As civilization 
developed parasitism concealed itself under more and 
more subtle and fair-seeming forms. The majority, 
becoming used to the exploitation to which their inferi- 
ority In brain and strength condemned them, no longer 
felt their existence threatened by It. The instinct of self- 
preservation, thus lulled to sleep, ceased to put men on 
their guard against their fellows, and to warn them 
to keep them at as great distance as possible. Thus the 
tendency to isolation and solitude stepped farther and 
farther back over the threshold of consciousness, and is 
now in most men but a wretched survival, only dis- 
coverable after careful search. 

This objection cannot be proved to be unfounded. 
It is, however, contradicted by the unalterable inner 
solitude that is most complete precisely in the strongest 
types of the species, and therefore cannot possibly have 
been acquired simply as a protection or defence against 
attack. 

The avoidance of mankind and flight from the world 
of many hermits, some saints, and certain sufferers from 
melancholia may be regarded as a form of pathological 
atavism. It Is observed that primitive instincts, which 
in a state of health are suppressed by civilization, break 
but In sickness. In the same way murder and other 
cannibal predilections appear in criminal degenerates. 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 171 

Similarly, the anti-social feelings that appear in abnor- 
mal persons represent, in all probability, a reversion to 
primitive states, not a new phenomenon. 

Unbiassed observation leads, then, to the uncomfort- 
able conclusion that man wallcs in fearsome loneliness 
throughout his life. Apart from love, which will be 
treated later, he never comes into intimate connection 
with people in general, except when he abandons himself 
to some big intellectual current, some view, some 
aesthetic movement, some political or religious party. 
There he mixes with those who share his views, without 
ever getting to know them personally or realizing their 
individual traits. On the other hand, whenever he does 
get to know them, natural incompatibility at once proves 
stronger than the bond of common opinions, as is proved 
by the friction and the bitter animosities so frequent 
among leaders of any party, sect, or school, whether 
philosophic, literary, or artistic. 

Rauber ^ thought that he could prove Aristotle's 
assertion of man's gregarious nature to be correct, by 
collecting and critically examining all possible informa- 
tion about the instances that appear from time to time 
of men living in a state of barbarism. His conclusion 
was that, since persons who have grown up far from 
men, in the woods and amidst animals, cannot speak, 
and have hardly anything human about them, therefore 
the individual can never be regarded as a man — society 
alone makes him a man. So long as Rauber confines 
the title of man to an individual who speaks correctly, 

^ Dr. R. Rauber, "Homo Sapiens Ferus; or, The Condition of the 
Savage, and its Scientific, Political, and Educational Significance," 
Leipzig, 1885. 



172 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

has passed his standards, is respectably dressed, and 
knows how to behave himself properly, he is perfectly 
right in refusing it to the wild creatures who have from 
time to time been found in the woods of Russia and 
South Germany, in the Pyrenees, and in Belgium. But 
there is no scientific justification for making the idea 
of man synonymous with that of a model citizen. It 
should no more surprise Rauber to find men living 
in barbarism unable to speak than that a child born and 
brought up in Germany, and surrounded by Germans, 
does not speak French or English. Language is not an 
inborn, but an acquired faculty. Wild men had no 
opportunity to learn it, and no need, since it is merely 
the means of carrying on those relationships with other 
men that they did not possess. Rauber maintains that 
his barbarians were not only unable to speak, but even 
to think. His own facts contradict him. Barbarians 
distinguish very clearly between friend and foe; they 
know how to express comfort or ill-humour; they ob- 
serve their environment, and to some extent adapt them- 
selves to it. The mere fact that they succeeded, under 
the most unfavourable circumstances, in supporting life 
in the wilderness proves them to be possessed of many 
faculties wanting in many a civilized man who speaks 
beautifully, and in other respects comes up to Rauber's 
ideal. Moreover, as von Schreber correctly observed, 
most, if not all, wild men did not lose their reason in 
the wilderness, but fled thither because feeble-minded 
or Insane from their birth. As a matter of fact, 
Rauber's dictum, " homo sapiens ferus," has no sig- 
nificance In the question of the mode of life of primitive 
man. No one denies that, in the present state of 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 173 

humanity, an individual who has been solitary since his 
childhood, and shut off from the society of his kind, 
must, from an intellectual point of view, be far behind 
those who have grown up and lived in a community. 
To do so would be to deny the value of upbringing, 
instruction, and example. Obviously, a single being, 
even were he a supreme genius, could not in the course 
of a short life make for himself the inventions and 
discoveries that represent the thousand years of work 
of the whole human race, and are transmitted to the 
educated individual in a compressed and abbreviated 
form, at school, by the reading of books, and instruction 
in the use of his faculties. But this fragmentary truth 
does not entitle us to the conclusion that men have been 
social beings since they began to be. Beneath the great 
mass of outworn ideas are certain feelings to which man 
has held fast, and they are solitary feelings. 

For thousands of years men have gone on repeating 
with lowered voice, and eyes piously uplifted and brim- 
ming with tears, sentimentalities that they take to be 
irrefutable, unassailable truths. They rave of friend- 
ship and love of one's neighbour — in these days of 
sympathy and altruism — as glorious feelings in which 
only quite exceptional monsters are deficient. The spec- 
tacle of social life, however, must give any unprejudiced 
observer pause, and cause a doubt as to the reality of 
these universally esteemed qualities of human nature, 
for, as judged by their actions, men appear to be ani- 
mated, not by brotherly love and friendship, but by 
selfishness and a hard indifference to others. Therefore 
those phrases and catch-words, that form part of the 
fabric of conventional morality, must be tested without 



174 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

any reference to the fact that they pass current every- 
where, that on one examines and everyone praises 
them. 

Friendship ! It is a word that makes the heart beat 
high. Alas ! it is only a word. Does it exist? What 
is it? Cicero's often-quoted work on "Friendship" 
starts from the Aristotelian dictum, reiterated with a 
certain hesitation, that man is a political animal, and 
therefore disposed by nature to mutual attachment.^ 
He gives the famous definition of friendship: "It is 
indeed nothing less than the most complete harmony of 
all things. Divine and human, with good-will and affec- 
tion," ^ This " good-will and affection " is smuggled 
in with truly sophistic skill, for it is that precisely which 
has to be proved. It is clear that complete harmony 
in all things is pleasant. Everyone is always convinced 
that he is right ; when he finds his own views In another, 
he has the same good opinion of him that he has of 
himself. But what about good-will and affection? In 
friendship defined as harmony the other really has no 
place; he is merely the mirror for the pleased con- 
templation of personal vanity, the echo which gives 
back the agreeable sound of a man's own voice. It 
is self that is sought, self that Is loved, self, one's own 
personality, that is never limited or restrained, as it 
must be by real " caritas." Daily experience proves 

^ M. Tullius Cicero, " De Amicitia," v.: "Sic enim mihi perspicere 
videor, ita natos esse nos ut inter omnes esset societas quasdam." It 
seems to him " that we are so constituted that a certain social bond 
exists between us all." 

'^ Ibid., book vi. : "Est autem amicitia mihi aliud nisi omnium divi- 
norum humanarumque rerum cum benevolentia et caritate summa 
consensio." 



SOCIETY* AND THE INDIVIDUAL 175 

how insecure a basis harmony affords for friendship. 
Let but some new question arise, upon which two 
hitherto like-minded friends take different views, and 
friendships that may have lasted a lifetime are rent 
asunder in a moment, or even, as happened a thousand 
times in France during the Dreyfus case, converted 
into deadly enmities. One seeks in vain for the " bene- 
volentia et caritas," supposed to have been an ingredient 
in the friendship, which might have prevented or out- 
lived the breach had it really existed, and exercised a 
mutual attraction. If friendship means only a com- 
mon point of view, it is wholly intellectual, aild not that 
instinctive expression that alone could prove man's prim- 
itive social nature. Cicero himself, moreover, sadly 
admits that " throughout the centuries three or four 
pairs of friends can be named " answering to his defi- 
nition, and that as a rule men only form friendships 
for the sake of protection and support — " praesidii 
adjumentique causa " — not from " benevolentia et cari- 
tas," and " love their friends as they would a flock out 
of which they hope to make a profit." ^ A feeling as 
rare as Cicero admits this to be cannot be a natural 
instinct. 

From antiquity comes the naive exclamation, " O 
friends, there are no friends ! " and the saying attributed 
to Bias, and quoted by Diogenes Laertius, "(^tXeTvws 
fjLia-ijo-oveTa'i" — ^" One should love in the expectation of 

^Cicero, " De Amicitia," book xxi.: " Sed plerique . . . amicos 
tanquam pecudes eos potissimum diligunt, ex quibus sperant se 
maximum fructum esse captures." 

L. Dugas has exhaustively treated the attitude of the ancients 
towards friendships in his excellent book, " L'Amitie antique d'apres 
les moeurs populaires et les theories des philosophes," Paris, 1894. 



176 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

hating." Can there be a more horrible denial of true 
attachment, a more fearsome warning against any 
simple, unreflective devotion than this suggestion that, 
in the very instant of overflowing tenderness, one should 
see the ugly features of the enemy? There was little 
of self-deception in the cold, keen glance with which 
La Rochefoucauld acquired his bitter knowledge of 
mankind. Many of his sayings show how small was 
his belief in the genuine genuineness of friendship: 
** We all have the strength to bear the misfortunes of 
others "; " We often find something far from displeas- 
ing to us in the misfortunes of our best friends "; " Our 
first sensation of pleasure in the good fortune of our 
friends does not arise from our natural goodness or 
from our friendship : it is, as a rule, Inspired by the 
selfishness that flatters us with the hope of being lucky 
in our turn, or of gaining some advantage for ourselves 
from their good fortune." 

What is called friendship is, as a matter of fact, a 
complex of various emotional and intellectual factors. 
The superficial relations subsisting between persons 
belonging to the same profession or rank in society may 
be dismissed as not worth classification. There is noth- 
ing spiritual In such ties. Indiscriminately formed by 
Interest, habit, vanity, custom, or at best the satisfaction 
caused by intellectual affinity. The friendships of child- 
hood and youth are much more deeply rooted. The 
comradeship formed in these years is usually based upon 
an Inclination in which the element of passion can always 
be detected, sometimes In a subdued, but often In quite 
a distinct form. Before puberty the full capacity for 
love exists, though the consciousness of sex has not 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 177 

awakened to direct it. A child, a young creature, 
lavishes on its companions the ardent tenderness that 
informs its love later on : the feeling is the same, though 
as yet unconscious, undifferentiated. It is love that ex- 
presses itself in such childish friendships, love as yet 
unconscious of its own meaning and intention, feeling, 
as in a dream, after some longed-for object, and uncon- 
sciously catching hold of something else.^ Later, when 
the individual, fully developed, realizes what he seeks, 
his youthful friendships change their tone and lose their 
ardour. Yet throughout life there rests upon them a 
mysterious glamour — the glamour with which every- 
one's imagination illumines his own youth. ^ So long 
as they retain the freshness of the present they are love, 
unconscious of its aim ; in the past they become part of 
each man's youth, and share in the soft tenderness of 
his thoughts of it. 

Even the mature adult is capable of a friendship that 
penetrates the inmost fibres of his emotional life : the 
friendship of fellow-soldiers, of Achilles and Patroclus. 
Men who have fought shoulder to shoulder, who have 

^ Schurtz has recognized, in his book on " Hordes, Classes, and 
Guilds," the significance of a common life in the years of adolescence 
in the development of the community, but neglects the psycho-physical 
side of the attractions subsisting between boys and youths which are 
often mysterious to themselves. 

* Compare Hermann Lingg's "Friends" (Schluszsteine, Berlin, 
1878, p. 4) : 

" In the happy days of youth. 
Under joy's control. 

Thou canst choose thy friends in truth, 
Knit them to thy soul. 
Only in those early days 
Wilt thou make the friend that stays. . . ," 



178 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

shared danger and hardship, the terrors of death and 
the intoxication of victory, are indissolubly knit to- 
gether, so long as they live. It is as though such mo- 
ments of extreme tension broke down the barriers that 
separate each individual from his fellows and the world 
around him, and made possible a fusion and mingling 
of souls. Since our conscious thought proceeds by anal- 
ogy, and tends to transfer the feelings accompanying 
certain actions to others whose resemblance to them is 
merely symbolical, it often happens that the friendship 
peculiar to fellow-soldiers is found among those who 
are fighting battles where no lives are lost and no blood 
shed — symbolic battles in defence of some conviction. 

Friendship in these two instances — the unconscious 
love of youth and the recollection of comradeship in 
battle — is a genuine feeling resting on a biological 
foundation. In all others it is a convention, and only 
skin-deep. This is even more true of philanthropy, 
generalized friendship for mankind as a whole. It has 
really nothing to do with feeling. It is an idea, a 
system, a method — what you will — but not a living 
sentiment. Philanthropy is only touched to genuine 
emotion when the abstract notion of mankind appears 
in some concrete shape, as someone who is personally 
attractive, as a particular widow, orphan, or distressed 
man, whose sufferings have a physiognomy of their 
own; it is an instinct that is only real in reference to 
definite individuals: when generalized, all form and 
purpose disappears. Whatever forms of philanthropic 
activity one likes to name — donations, endowments, 
societies, and movements of every sort, from Carnegie's 
millions for free libraries to the Red Cross Society and 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 179 

the Salvation Army — one will find vanity, self-right- 
eousness, fancies, fixed ideas, delusions, religious, po- 
litical, social, or merely political convictions at the bot- 
tom of them all, and never that instinctive sympathy 
which must, by its very nature, be directed to a clearly- 
defined individual, and cannot be aroused for such 
vague, undefined generalities as make no appeal to the 
feelings. Only In abnormal persons, whose intellectual 
processes are permanently tinged with feeling, does the 
love of humanity exist in a real and strongly emotional 
form, and in them It serves to give an intelligible direc- 
tion to their overwrought sensibility, hovering between 
tears and rapture; to the longing which has no definite 
aim, and to the hysterical excitement whose pathological 
ground they do not understand. Sentimental philan- 
thropy Is closely akin to religious mania, and both 
originate in a morbid mental condition. 

Consciousness tries to provide a content such as reason 
can sanction for an emotionalism that operates in the 
vague. The form of this content varies, according to 
the education, upbringing, and intellectual environment 
of the Individual, between mystical communion with 
God and self-abnegating worship of humanity. This 
doubtless Is the explanation of the love of mankind 
that amounted to a religion with St. Simon and his 
disciples, and with Auguste Comte and the Positlvists. 
The altruism of Spencer and the Socialist doctrine of 
human solidarity are the logical outcome of certain 
sociological views : the ethical completion of a certain 
philosophy of the relations of the individual to society. 
For sane and rational minds, such views are entirely 
without an emotional side at all, or possess it only 



i8o THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

in so far as such social and ethical convictions are 
artificially reinforced by the suggestion of Inherited 
religious feelings. 

Only the novice in psychiatrical and psychological 
questions will see anything contradictory In the fact that 
spiritual anomalies will rouse anti-social atavism In one 
case and unbounded love of humanity In another. The 
expert knows that one and the same organic disturbance 
will, according as it Is accompanied by depression or 
excitement, take the form of hatred of the world or 
philanthropy, between melancholia and mania, or alter- 
nate between one and the other. 

The psychology and biology of friendship and altru- 
ism ought to be studied thoroughly, provided always 
that sentimental prejudice is avoided. Here It Is only 
possible to refer briefly to the methods and results of 
a study that is of the greatest importance for a knowl- 
edge of human nature and an understanding of indi- 
vidual and social life. According to these conclusions, 
neither friendship nor philanthropy is a primitive in- 
stinct proving man to be naturally a social being. They 
are views and convictions acquired late, as a result of 
an artificial civilization, and without deep roots in the 
life of feeling. 

One feeling there Is, and only one — not an Invention 
or suggestion of the Intellect, nor the mere creation of 
habit, but a genuine feeling — strong enough to call man 
out of his selfish isolation and command his relations to 
others — the sex instinct. It had nothing to do with love 
originally, and often has nothing to do with it now. 
Only a slow process of development has ennobled and 
elevated It. The prehistoric savage and the present- 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL i8i 

day brute sees in woman only the satisfaction of momen- 
tary desire. When it is satisfied, she Is Indifferent, even 
repulsive. As man's consciousness became more varied 
and refined, the ideas that accompanied his sensual im- 
pulses became more lofty. Thus that which roused de- 
sire also roused far-reaching, lofty, and Illuminating 
thoughts; woman acquired an attraction and a charm, 
and roused a devotion far beyond the mere enjoyment 
of the moment. 

Love in its Ideal aspect, the side of It that enters Into 
consciousness, the concrete imagery of poetic associa- 
tions, castles in the air and dream-pictures that make 
it up, is but a superstructure created by man's acquired 
habits of thought, knowledge, and Imagination upon the 
basic Instinct of sex, which alone is natural. With 
woman this feeling gives birth to a kind of continuation 
of itself in the maternal instinct. The sex instinct 
brings the parents together; the maternal Instinct binds 
the children, first to the mother, and In the course of 
development to the parents. Thus man, the solitary 
wanderer, Is gathered Into a group bound together by 
a real, organic feeling, independent of reason, and prior 
to any intellectual culture. In the family we have 
human individuality completed in Its natural form. 
There can be no doubt that men lived in families before 
they were obliged to sustain existence by effort and by 
art. Superficial sociologists often speak as though the 
organized community and division of labour of bees and 
ants, their system of earning and spending, and their 
social arrangements generally, were closely akin to the 
human State and society, and could serve as an 
example to it. But the beehive and the ant-heap have 



1 82 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

nothing In common with society and the State. They 
correspond to the family, not to these artificial creations. 
The community in which bees and ants live is not a 
State, but the natural family of these insects, in which 
there is one mother, many fathers, a mass of sexless, 
and a few sexually distinguished children. It Is natu- 
ral for bees and ants to live in such a community as 
this, for men to live in families — family being under- 
stood purely as It is natural history. With this, the 
primitive Instinct that binds the members of a biological 
family together, the legal conception of a family has 
nothing to do. It is the outcome of the development 
of property, rather than, as Fustel de Coulanges ^ tried 
to show, of early religious conceptions, although family 
life had Its own rites. Its own place in the general cult. 
Since the family represents the real self-contained com- 
pletion of the individual. It Is natural that this crystal- 
lized core should dominate all later developments of 
human society, and that all the institutions that ap- 
peared, such as property, belief, law, rank, and nobility, 
should centre in the family. They influenced Its form 
and significance, but It was there before them, and Is 
not their outcome. 

The sex instinct is the sole social impulse In man 
that Is not due to example, habit, or artificial Interests. 
It Is the sole source of sympathetic emotion, even when 
not apparently roused by the other sex. Where It Is 
restrained or repressed, as in the eunuch, the whole na- 
ture dries up, and becomes incapable of feeling for 
anything or anyone outside itself. Love of child Is the 

* Fustel de Coulanges, "La Cite Antique," Paris, i888, twelfth edi- 
tion, p. 39, "The Family." ^ 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 183 

first transformation of the sex instinct; it appears in a 
still less differentiated and more unconscious form in 
youthful friendship : sentimentality, exaltation, enthusi- 
astic admiration for ideas and their exponents, for move- 
ments and those who lead them, for groups, classes, 
nations, and historical figures — all are the outcome of 
that primitive instinct which reason and imagination 
have trained to flow along many artificial channels, 
like the water of a complicated fountain that issues in 
countless jets from a single source. Bossuet's truest 
word was: "All is love transformed." A train of 
thought or act of will which is not at bottom rooted in 
the rich soil of the sex instinct remains a mere shadow, 
colourless and bloodless, warmed by no feeling, power- 
less to issue in act. 

But while it is true that sexuality, raised to love in 
the course of man's intellectual development, holds the 
world together, and lies at the base of all deeper human 
Interests, it would be false to look upon it as the force 
which has formed individuals into communities, be they 
societies, peoples, or States. Love only created the 
primitive family. This was, of course, not based upon 
monogamy. The example of the apes, and those human 
instincts which have not been repressed by civilized 
morality, enforce the assumption that man was origi- 
nally a polygamous animal : he took and kept as many 
wives as he could defend against rivals. The patriarch 
lived in the midst of his wives and the offspring, to 
which their mothers were devoted if he was not, with- 
out any close intercourse with other families. Children 
remained with their parents only until they were fully 
developed; then they went off and started new families. 



1 84 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

Descendants certainly did not go far from the parent 
tree. Neither man nor any other animal wanders unless 
he is obliged to do so, and of all habits the hardest 
and most painful to break is that which binds him to a 
familiar spot. Only very late did he feel any curiosity 
as to what lay behind the mountains and across the 
water, still later any desire for the wide distances be- 
yond. The unknown was more terrible than attractive 
to primitive man. If anyone doubt this, let him observe 
the mental attitude of the simple man of the people 
towards foreign parts. Doubtless families of a common 
origin remained neighbours; they were accustomed to 
one another, played together as children, and found 
their pleasure together later on. These groups, near 
one another and mixing together In this superficial way, 
might be called hordes, yet it Is certain that there was 
in them no organization, nothing that limited the volun- 
tary movements of the individual. 

Man could only live In this free and peaceful blood- 
relationship, disturbed by no serious strife save that for 
the possession of some women, so long as It was possible 
for him to satisfy his needs naturally and without 
labour. A change came over his relation to his fellows 
when he was compelled to expend skill and trouble In 
protecting himself against cold and want. Then he 
realized the possibility of making them useful. His 
Indifference gave way to a desire for their services. 
Earlier, the mating Instinct alone had brought him Into 
relation with them. Now the desire to subjugate them 
and save himself trouble by their exertions arose. The 
original sex Instinct was now reinforced by the Instinct 
of mastery and exploitation. The satisfaction of this 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 185 

second Instinct was accompanied by a pleasure compar- 
able in strength and kind to that of the mating instinct. 
The strong man felt a proud satisfaction in mastering 
the weak, making him his possession and his thing, 
disposing of him as he pleased, and making a profit 
out of him, analogous to that of compelling a woman 
to the satisfaction of his desires; the selfish joy felt by 
his manhood in attack and conquest was rooted in the 
sex instinct, and drew from it its strength. At the 
beginning of the struggle for existence the two Instincts 
mingled together. Man sought in woman not only the 
means to this pleasure, but a slave to do his work. 
Woman, as the weaker, was naturally the first sacrifice. 
The smallest expenditure of strength and energy was 
required for her exploitation. Thus the family, created 
by the necessity of the life force, offered for centuries 
the easiest opening for parasitism, and does to-day in 
many cases. The power given by Roman law to the 
husband and father Is the natural rule of all nations; 
it prevails, although in a weakened and modified form, 
under the most advanced civilization. 

At the lowest stage In civilization the head of the 
household seeks to have as many wives and children as 
possible, since they represent the earliest form of wealth 
— i.e., slaves. When the female children grow up, and 
can no longer be retained by their parents, he sells them 
to a wooer In exchange for goods that Increase his pos- 
sessions. The Greek myth of Kronos devouring his 
own children symbolizes accurately the primitive re- 
lation of the head of the house to his family. The 
Greek story says nothing of the retribution of the chil- 
dren who escaped being devoured. But It Is the regular 



i86 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

custom of many savage peoples. When the parents 
grow old and weak, they are forcibly put to death by 
their children, who, in some Australian and Malayan 
tribes, then eat them. Gentle ethnographers excuse the 
murder of the parents on the ground that it proceeds 
from a praiseworthy desire to free them from the 
burden of existence. But such tenderness is hardly to 
be expected from barbarians. It is far more probable 
that, when the children become the stronger, they re- 
venge in this brutal manner their earlier subjection, 
and thus indulge their own parasitic instinct at their 
parents' expense. 

In the course of development land became valuable, 
first as hunting-ground, then as pasturage, and finally as 
tillage, and was coveted accordingly. As the younger 
members of the family grew up, and found their native 
spot too narrow for them, they began to spread into the 
neighbouring territory. If it was already occupied, a 
death-struggle ensued. In primitive times the van- 
quished were horribly tortured, killed, and eaten. Not 
till much later were prisoners taken and used as domes- 
tic slaves. 

The earliest form of parasitism was exercised by man 
towards his wife and children, so long as they would 
suffer it. Next came war, under the spur of stern 
necessity, and with improvement in the condition of 
life as its object. Those who had not were driven to 
make war on those who had. Soon, however, It was 
not only the man who had neither flocks nor herds who 
attacked the rich, to take from him what he needed and 
had not, but the rich man who attacked his neighbours, 
without the excuse of need, In order to Increase his own 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 187 

possessions, or even merely for the ardent pleasure of it. 
In battle a man realized his personality and its possi- 
bilities to the full. Victory heightened his egoism to 
a kind of rapture, and afforded it an incomparably keen 
satisfaction in high-handed dealing with the vanquished, 
whom he tortured, mutilated, murdered, and plundered 
at his own good pleasure. In these primitive times 
there was nothing symbolical in the exertions and 
ardours of battle and victory; there was nothing abstract 
about it or its consequences. The plans were not laid 
nor the advantages secured by leaders alone. It was 
all in the highest degree concrete, and the gain imme- 
diate and tangible. Each combatant fought hand to 
hand with his opponent, grappled his body to him, 
gripped and wrestled with him, threatened him wildly 
with look, mien, and gesture, with horrible distortions 
and hideous cries, throttling, tearing, and then slaugh- 
tering him. The conqueror enjoyed the fruits of vic- 
tory on the spot, slaking his thirst for blood and his 
greed for plunder. In those days battle was the prepa- 
ration and the price of the veritable orgy of victory, and 
a man who had once revelled in it was filled with a per- 
petual, ardent desire for more. So the old Germans 
held war as the noblest and most worthy occupation for 
a man, promised an eternal abode in Valhalla to the 
fallen warrior, and looked upon a peaceful death as a 
disgrace. 

Probably man is not a warrior by nature. Coward- 
ice is much commoner than courage, and the natural 
fear of death that underlies our consciousness is only 
transformed into a contempt for it by the power of 
example, education, the influence of moral ideas and 



i88 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

standards, and the force of a passion that obscures the 
consciousness itself. Early man probably only at- 
tacked when he was certain of his superiority, and the 
risk of battle seemed small in proportion to the prize 
of victory. Hobbes's famous saying that man is a wolf 
to man must be accepted with the limitation that he is a 
wolf that attacks sheep, and makes off when he meets 
with resistance. 

When the Greeks raised their heroes tO' the rank of 
demigods, and traced their descent from the gods on the 
side of father or mother, they came nearer to the truth. 
There seemed something more than mortal in a con- 
tempt for death and the reckless encountering of risks 
bound in human calculation to be fatal, something that 
could only be explained by kindred to the immortal gods. 
Pride and idealism can act upon civilized men so 
strongly that they will dare the extremity of danger 
without blanching, and even face certain death. But 
primitive man was no hero. Such heroism as he showed 
came from sheer ignorance of danger. It was only 
when he saw no danger that he became bold and enter- 
prising. Thus, weakly individuals, groups, hordes, or 
tribes, could not long live side by side with stronger 
ones, to whom their weakness was a permanent tempta- 
tion that left them no rest short of destroying or sub- 
jecting all those weaker members who had not saved 
themselves by flight. Each tribe thus spread the fear 
of itself over an ever-widening circle, until it came upon 
another stronger than itself. The individuals, then, 
being more or less on an equality, each side could only 
obtain the more or less certain superiority necessary 
to stimulate attack by the possession of larger numbers 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 189 

and greater readiness to serve. Thus, war could not 
be suddenly undertaken out of hand. It was no longer 
a single combat between two men or the wild hand-to- 
hand tussle of two families. Preparations were neces- 
sary, alliances and exercises. Individuals must gather 
round some leader, who had either been chosen or had 
forced himself upon the others by the force of person- 
ality. A plan of action had to be prepared. Those 
who hung back had to be fortified, those who opposed 
to be silenced or compelled. Weapons and provisions 
had to be got ready. In a word, organization was 
needed. A campaign then assembled a number of 
people, taught them to exercise foresight, to act to- 
gether, and submit to command, to conceive of larger 
purposes, and to regard themselves and their com- 
panions as a unity brought together for a common 
project. If the war ended in victory, the organization, 
its advantages obvious even to the dullest, survived 
the cause that had brought it into existence. The 
leader, who had felt the joys of command, been re- 
warded by the lion's share of the spoil and of the 
pleasure of violating, torturing, and executing a very 
large number of captives, was not likely to wish to give 
up his position on the conclusion of peace and to return 
to his former obscure mediocrity. Cincinnatus was 
certainly a very unusual phenomenon in primitive his- 
tory. The warriors whom he had led to victory were 
strongly and often passionately attached to him by the 
recollection of common dangers and exploits, unless the 
division of the spoil had created hatred and strife. En- 
riched by booty, he was in a position to bind his war- 
riors permanently to him by presents or some sort of 



190 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

pay, and could strengthen the tie between them and 
himself by a continual succession of further fortunate 
campaigns and conquests/ 

Thus the commander is the centre round which the 
common life crystallizes. The origin of the State lay 
not in the family, not in the horde, but simply and solely 
in the camp. There was nothing in the circumstances 
of a horde of related groups, used to living casually side 
by side, nothing in the relation of man and wife or of 
parents and children, that could in any way compel the 
formation of institutions which confined the freedom of 
individuals within hard-and-fast limits, divided those 
who were born equal into rulers and ruled, and imposed 
upon the individual the fixed forms of a common life 
which he could not afterwards shake off at will. Only 
war provided this compulsion. War created the bond 
which linked the individual to the community. The 
beginning of the State was not sympathy, but the desire 
for blood and plunder. It was not any gregarious 
instinct that brought men together, but the perception 
that they were more likely to get possession of their 
neighbour's goods together than alone. It was not in 
peace, but in the stress and danger of battle, that the 
idea of solidarity arose. In the early stages of civlliza- 

^ Tacitus, " Germania," xiv. : " Magnum . . . comitatum non nisi 
vi belloque tueare; exiguunt enim principis sui liberalitate ilium bella- 
torem equum, ilium cruentam victricemque frameam. nam epulas, et 
quanquam incompti, largi tamen apparatus pro stipendio cedunt; 
materia munificentiae per bella et raptus " (A great train can only be 
maintained by war and violence; they expect from the liberality of 
their leader the war-horse, and the victorious. Banquets that, though 
rude, are abundant are a form of pay: war and plunder provide the 
means for generosity.) 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 191 

tion free individuals never willingly united for any 
fruitful creative work, nor could they have been per- 
suaded to join together in any civilizing task. Violence, 
destruction, and plunder, for which union was an in- 
dispensable condition of success, alone gathered them 
round a leader. Only the stern command of a leader 
compelled them to common exertion. 

War, an acute and exclusive form of parasitism, was 
alone the cause of the formation of the State, and for 
long its only, even to-day its principal, object. The 
army is everywhere regarded as the most important 
instrument of the State's power. Theoretically, its pur- 
pose is loudly proclaimed to be not attack — that is, 
murder, robbery, and conquest — but defence; although 
defence would obviously be unnecessary, there being 
nothing to defend, did not every State discern in every 
neighbour the permanent intention to attack it, for no 
other object than that of murder, robbery, and conquest. 
The highest branch of the public service is considered 
to be diplomacy — the symbolic embodiment of the war 
power of the State. The mere presence of a diplo- 
matic representative is a continual reminder to neigh- 
bouring States of the army at his back that gives weight 
to his utterances. He is the menace for war, amicably 
disguised. It is his duty to spy out the Intentions and 
armaments of neighbouring powers, to aggrandize his 
own State at the expense of those that seem to him 
weaker, and enforce his demands on them by the threat 
of war and the suggestion that it will be more ad- 
vantageous, and involve less sacrifice on the part of 
the State in question, to accede than to resist it. Lat- 
terly, the efforts of diplomacy have been directed to the 



192 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

avoidance of war; sometimes it has even gone so far 
as to consider the possibility of a commercial treaty on 
a basis of mutual advantage. In earlier times such an 
action was unknown, and would have been despised. 
Diplomacy, in its nature and origin as much an instru- 
ment of war as an army, is a military development on 
the line of least resistance. Its object is to obtain 
satisfaction for the selfishness and greed of the State by 
the mere spoken or silent indication of the existence of 
force, without recourse to the sword. It would never 
have been needed had each State remained within its 
own limits, and demanded nothing of others, except 
on the basis of mutual exchange. 

The mere existence of an army involved the necessity 
of maintaining it, and providing the necessary means for 
that purpose, and for its more and more complete de- 
velopment. Originally the general paid his men from 
the private property they amassed for him on plunder- 
ing expeditions; but where the general became the head 
of a great land and people, and war ceased to be the 
permanent condition of the community, the army, no 
longer able to rely upon booty, had to be supported by 
the community itself. Taxes were levied: at first, ex- 
traordinary taxes for a special purpose : so long, that is, 
as the army was only levied for a certain time to per- 
form some definite task, and could then be dismissed, 
with the exception of a bodyguard; later, when standing 
armies arose, regular taxes, which formed a permanent 
obligation on the part of every inhabitant. The ex- 
istence of an army made taxation necessary and possible. 
The State's need of taxes compelled it to see that the 
citizens were able to pay. A foreign conqueror might 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 193 

take all that he found, without caring for the ruin of 
the people. The founder of a State and his successor, 
unless stupid, frivolous, and profligate enough to echo 
the Pompadours' "After us, the deluge!" must take 
heed for the future, cherish the hen that laid the golden 
eggs, and see that the taxpayers were able to fill the 
coffers of the State. They therefore endeavoured to 
develop institutions that might enable the hard-working, 
productive citizen to grow rich undisturbed, and Insure 
the security of his life and property. Wiser rulers 
avoided the excessive Impositions that left the subject 
no stimulus to a labour of whose fruits he was deprived, 
and penalized the poor man who worked for the sake 
of the idler: as is the case in ill-governed States, where 
the people are simply ground down by the government. 
They assisted trade and industry by such well-meant 
regulations as import dues and commercial treaties. 
Like Henry IV., they wished that their subjects might 
have a fowl in the oven on a Sunday, not merely that 
they might be well fed, but because more can be asked, 
and got, from well-to-do subjects. 

From this consideration all the beneficial institutions 
in the State arose, even such as do not at a first glance 
appear to have any connection with an increased taxable 
and rateable capacity. The State laid roads, rendered 
rivers navigable, and built harbours in the first instance 
for the army, but in the second for trade. The names 
of all subjects were inscribed in ofliclal registers, and 
thus brought within the administrative net, available 
when any contribution was required. Schools were 
founded, and every subject forced to rise to a somewhat 
higher stage of intellectual development, because the 



194 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

State can do more with brains into which some ray of 
enlightenment has penetrated than with those that are 
totally dark. A code of law was established, without 
which there would have been a standing war of all 
against all, that would have prevented the productivity 
of labour and made welfare impossible. 

These traits that seem to present the friendly face of 
culture are revealed to the more penetrating gaze as 
those of the fierce man of war. All the departments of 
the State, that have crystallized so firmly and developed 
in such subtle variety in the course of centuries, emanate 
from one centre, and this centre is preparedness for war. 

Such has been the harsh course of the organization of 
men into societies and States. So long as nature satis- 
fies their wants, they feel no inclination to combine, but 
live apart in separate families, in which they are bound 
by the attraction of the sexes and by brotherhood, itself 
a form of adaptation of this strongest of all instincts. 
With the necessity of making exertions to support life 
parasitism appears. The motive that impels man to 
seek out his fellows is not a gregarious instinct, as has 
often been maintained, though without proof, and con- 
trary to all probability and to all psychological evidence, 
but the profit to be made from them by force or fraud. 
As long as he can keep the members of his family in 
subjection he exploits them; then he attacks his neigh- 
bours with ravage and slaughter. Victory and its 
advantages provide him with a devoted following, which 
makes depredation possible on a wider and more effec- 
tive scale. The leader understands that he must keep 
the instrument of this parasitic system In a state of con- 
stant efficiency, and creates Institutions for that purpose. 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 195 

He collects the largest possible group of men under his 
control, and abstracts from them the largest possible 
share of the fruits of their labour, compelling them to 
supply him with soldiers, whom he supports by con- 
tributions forcibly levied on his other subjects. In so 
far as he is wise enough to profit by the teachings of 
experience, he endeavours in various ways to secure, in 
the subjects who enable him to be a parasite by their 
service in war and at their expense in time of peace, a 
certain level of satisfaction in their lives and work, and 
a certain readiness to pay. 

The absurdity of Rousseau's idea that society origi- 
nated in, and now rests upon, a free contract between 
equals has, long been patent. And the same applies to 
the notion, that lies at the base of all Socialist theories 
and systems, that men formed themselves in communi- 
ties for the execution of great works of social utility 
which were beyond the powers of individuals. In a 
future that is certainly not yet in sight men may attain 
such a height of mental and moral development that 
they will voluntarily, as the outcome of conviction, 
undertake some common task in which the profit accru- 
ing to any individual from his personal exertion is not 
at the first glance obvious. The past affords no ex- 
ample of free co-operation of this systematic kind. 
Work got done by means of severe discipline, or com- 
pulsion exercised by men or by institutions representing 
the crystallized will-power of former men. Everyone 
evaded work where he could, and shifted the burden of 
it on to his neighbour. The foundation of the State 
was neither a contract nor a recognition of the value of 
rational co-operation : it was organized parasitism, the 



196 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

exploitation of the weak many by a ruler and the 
mediate and immediate servants of his power; the ex- 
ploitation of weak neighbours by war or by treaties 
imposed upon them by war, or the explicit or implicit 
threat of war. 

Descriptions and explanations of the State are legion. 
One jurist and pohtical philosopher sees in the State 
" the organization of the male population of a country 
to form an independent person directing the common 
life "; another sees in it " the total resident population 
within a certain territory united to form an organic 
moral personality under a supreme power directing the 
common interests." To quote more of these pleonasms 
seems to me superfluous. The second definition is a 
masterpiece of phrase-making. All that has to be 
proved is assumed, and the impudent assumptions then 
combined to form a picture, not of the reality, but of the 
idea which jurisprudence and political philosophy wish 
to spread. According to it, the State is a totality 
united " under a supreme power directing the common 
interests." This is what the supreme power has always 
tried to make out, since people began to ask for some 
justification of its claim. History, however, teaches 
that It never has directed the " common interest," but 
first and forernost the Interest of some individual or 
family, and then that of the necessary Instruments of 
its power. In the course of development the circle 
of these instruments widens. In countries under Par- 
liamentary government It embraces not only the army 
and the Ministry, but the members and their con- 
stituents. Even so the supreme power is always in- 
vested In a small minority, to which the majority Is 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 197 

sacrificed, as is proved by the advantages enjoyed by 
the landed interest in the shape of import duties and 
in direct taxation, etc. All that can be said is, that 
the supreme power always represents the measures 
passed for its own advantage as being for the general 
good. Well-intentioned professors teach that they are 
so, and the stupid many believe it. Again, it is only 
by doing violence to the truth that the State can be 
said to unite the community in an " organic moral per- 
sonality." " Organic personality " is a meaningless, 
senseless phrase which corresponds to no idea. The 
State is a concept, not a personality. It is not an 
organism in the sense in which that word can be applied 
to a living thing, but a collection of biologically inde- 
pendent individuals, whose mutual dependence is en- 
tirely due to human compulsion. 

Moreover, the little word " moral " has been very 
cunningly smuggled into the definition. Morality plays 
absolutely no part in the formation of the State. It has 
proceeded simply and solely with a view to the advan- 
tage of the supreme power. The famous saying, " My 
country, right or wrong," recognizes this with cynical 
frankness. " My country " — that is, the supreme con- 
trol in the State, which has throughout centuries taught 
its subjects that it is synonymous with their country: 
that it should be dear to them : that they should love it, 
feel its hard compulsion like a caress, and make the 
sacrifices that It relentlessly demands of them In no 
spirit of hatred and imprecation, but with feelings of 
enthusiasm and delight. The supreme control, then, 
may commit all the enormities in the shape of massacre, 
robbery, and fraud that mark every Invasion — such, to 



198 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

take a few concrete examples, as marked the partition 
of Poland, the wars of the first coalition against France, 
the campaign of France against the Roman Republic 
in 1848, the French war against Mexico, or England's 
attack on the Boer States; yet, because it does all this 
in the soul-stirring name of country, it is held to be the 
duty of every subject, even, by the abuse of an honour- 
able idea, his sacred duty, to acclaim these base actions, 
to support that power that performs them through 
thick and thin, even to be proud of it. Such is the 
morality of the " organic moral personality," which 
the State is supposed to represent. 

The name " legal State " is, like the " organic moral 
personality," a mere servile invention of phrase-monger- 
ing professors. The purpose of the State is said to be 
to secure an equal law for all, in place of mere despot- 
ism, and so to protect individual rights. This is only 
true so far as it concerns small interests and differences 
among subjects themselves. In such cases there is 
usually no cause for the supreme power to take one 
side or the other. It can view the strife with perfect 
indifference, decide it according to the citation of the 
law, and see that the individual neither do violence to 
his neighbour nor seek to protect himself against at- 
tempted retribution with his fists. It must, of course, 
prevent any disorder that would be inimical to the gen- 
eral weal, and hinder the State from disposing of the 
whole people for its own advantage. Whenever the 
question at issue is an important one, or the interest of 
the subject come at all in conflict with that of the 
supreme power, the law is powerless. The picture of 
a legal State evaporates, and the State once more ap- 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 199 

pears as a power organized in the service of parasitic 
self-aggrandizement. The difference between the des- 
pot of the East and the Western community, with 
its constitutions, codes of law, rules of legal procedure, 
and questions of appurtenances, is only a difference of 
form. The despot simply takes the property of his 
subject and strikes off his head if he is discontented; the 
legal State compels him, by process of expropriation, to 
subscribe to a levy, that must in all cases be paid by the 
other subjects, some possession that all the gold in the 
world would not have induced him to part with. The 
despot answers a subject who speaks of his rights with 
the stick or the axe; the legal State uses its courts to 
show him his own helplessness, and its government de- 
partments to prove the sovereignty of the State, and 
then, if he make a nuisance of himself by citing the 
laws, shuts him up in prison or in an asylum. In the 
" legal " State force is called law, but it is as irre- 
sponsibly exercised under this fine name as under despot- 
ism. It is small comfort to the helpless individual to 
have the supreme power going through the hypocrisy 
of citing articles and paragraphs before violating his 
right, instead of doing it without such formal pre- 
tence. 

The touching little story of the miller of Sans SoucI 
is always quoted to illustrate the majesty of the law in 
a legal State. Here we have a great King and a petty 
dispute. But had the King been petty and the dispute 
great, the miller would have found there was no judicial 
court for him in Berlin. On innumerable occasions 
States have gone bankrupt, refused to pay interest on 
their loans, repudiated definite treaties, and appropri- 



200 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

ated private property. The State can make its sover- 
eignty the excuse for overriding any law binding on all 
its subjects. Even when it is not itself concerned, the 
legal State will refuse all assistance in a dispute between 
a powerless subject and an exceptionally powerful one. 
The famous suit brought in 1674 by the cabinet-maker 
James Percy, in which he claimed the title and posses- 
sions of the house of the then Earl, now Duke, of 
Northumberland, was dismissed, although there was no 
evidence against it. It would go in just the same way 
to-day. In the course of the last century there has 
come up again and again the plea of the heirs of a 
certain Martin to the recovery of their inheritance, a 
great sum of money deposited in the State Bank at 
Venice, and appropriated by the French officials in the 
taking of Venice in 1797. The plea has been as often 
rejected by the French judicature, merely because the 
State would be otherwise compelled to hand over the 
many millions it has unjustly appropriated. 

The phrase for which Bismarck has been so sharply 
criticized, although he never used it ^ — " Might before 
right " — is perfectly accurate, not as a principle accord- 
ing to which action should proceed, but as a statement 
of the manner in which it does proceed. Nowadays, 
of course, the cry of the common good is always raised 
when the power of the State overrides the rights of sub- 
jects or of neighbours weaker than itself. The method 
is the famihar one of identifying the supreme power in 

^ Georg Biichmann ("Winged Words," eighteenth edition, Berlin, 
1895, p. 481) proves that in the Prussian Senate, on March 13, 1863, 
Count Bismarck expressly refuted the allegation made by Count 
Schwerin that he had used the phrase, " Might comes before right." 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 201 

the State with the country, and the advantages of the 
ruler or ruling class with that of the people as a whole. 
Right without might is a word only; might can give its 
arbitrary actions right. If it is strong enough and lasts 
long enough, it no longer needs to make any actual 
exertion to give effect to its will. Its will has become 
right. Right is its symbol — a symbol that often con- 
tinues to overcome all resistance long after the will 
behind it has ceased to possess any effective power. But 
when another will rises in opposition, and tests the 
energy and resistance of this sublimated might, then the 
right which has outlived its might dissolves into thin 
air. 

All the high-flown theories of a legal State, the State 
as a moral being, the State as a living organism which 
perceives the interests of the people as a whole, have 
been invented by the quibbling rhetoricians, who devote 
all the resources of their art to disguising the harsh 
outline of facts as they are with a decoration of words. 
They do this by assigning such causes and purposes as 
are calculated to create reverence in the uncritical mul- 
titude, and explaining everything to the advantage of 
those who profit by the existing order. When Louis 
XIV. said, " I am the State," he expressed the truth 
with brutal brevity. It is the shortest and most lucid 
statement of the fact. The State is the government — 
originally a ruler, then a class, a circle of families 
united by relationship and similarity of interests, a 
conquering race. Its own compelling necessity has led 
the government to create every institution calculated 
to insure It the permanent subjection, obedience, and 
readiness to pay of the majority. The gradual rise of 



202 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

the State machine In Its present universal and complete 
development has been, and Is, directed to one purpose — 
the exploitation of the many for the advantage of the 
governing person or class — i.e., parasitism. 

St. Augustine had a clear Intuition of this when he 
put, as the heading of the fourth chapter of Book IV. 
in the " De Civltate Dei," " Quam simllia sint latrocinils 
regna absque justltia " — " now kingdoms remote from 
justice resemble robber bands"; and continues: "If 
there be no justice, what are kingdoms but great robber 
bands? And what are robber bands but httle king- 
doms? " He then goes on to give the famous classical 
anecdote of the pirate who was captured and brought 
before Alexander the Great. When the King asked 
him how he came to make the sea unsafe, he replied: 
" Eleganter et veraciter " — " In the same manner that 
thou makest the earth unsafe; but because I do It in 
my little ship I am called a robber, and thou who dost 
it in a great fleet art called Imperator." Thus the 
Bishop of Hippo makes justice the sole dividing-line 
between the State and the robber band, without per- 
ceiving that when the State has reduced Its robbery 
to a system, and in the course of generations accus- 
tomed to it those who are robbed. It calls the system 
justice. 

Fr. Engels ^ observes correctly that civilized society 
Is organized In a State which is " exclusively the State 
of the governing class, always a machine whose essential 
purpose Is to keep down the oppressed and exploited 
class." Paul Leroy-Beaulleu, who, unlike Engels, Is no 

^ Fr. Engels, " The Origin of the Family, of Private Property, and 
of the State," sixth edition, Stuttgart, 1894. 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 203 

Socialist, says the same thing in more measured terms : ^ 
" The State is an organism characterized by two activi- 
ties peculiar to it and always present in it — the power 
to compel all the inhabitants of a district to observe the 
commands called laws or regulations, and the power 
to compel them to pay contributions in money, of which 
it disposes at its pleasure. The organization of the 
State is thus based upon compulsion, and its compulsion 
takes two forms — laws and taxes." 

The outline drawn by the conqueror, warrior, and 
oppressor is filled up in the course of historical develop- 
ment in accordance with the standard of civilization. 
The multitude acquires enlightenment and judgment, 
and refuses to be plundered lawlessly. The beneficiary 
of the government has to flatter the whims and humours 
of the governed. He can no longer satisfy his own 
desires without a thought of others. He must employ 
at least a part of the means he has wrung from the 
people upon objects that appear at any rate to be of 
general utility, which can be said to do something for 
the majority in the way of alleviating the struggle for 
existence or adding some element of material or intel- 
lectual well-being to their lives. The circle of the 
State's beneficiaries widens. It opens to include obscure 
individuals who have made their way by inherent force 
rather than by birth or social connections. To use the 
threadbare political tag, meaningless enough in itself, 
the State becomes democratic. The majority often 
succeed in setting up an institution that establishes a 
material solidarity of interests between themselves and 

^ Paul Leroy-BeauHeu, " L'Etat Moderne et ses Fonctions," Paris, 
1876, p. 40. 



204 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

the favoured minority, and exploits the descendants of 
former plunderers for the advantage of the majority — 
for example, the rising income-tax, State endowment 
of Old Age Pensions, provision of every sort out of 
the public funds. 

But this partial change of content leaves the form of 
the State and its methods of compulsion untouched. Its 
origin in the violence of the warrior, and its purpose as 
a permanent system of plundering enslaved subordi- 
nates, is obvious in the whole and in every part of it. 

Free men have always seen in taxes, the earliest form 
of subject due, an intolerable mark of personal servi- 
tude, and continually risen against them. The whole 
of European history, from the migrations to the French 
Revolution, is occupied by the contest of territorial 
chiefs, great or small, who refused to recognize the 
" legal State," " the moral organism," or " the supreme 
power controlling the interests of the whole," against 
the King, who was resolved to break the power of the 
feudal lords, and subdue them to his will, to put an 
end to their control of the lands and lives of their 
dependents, and reserve the exploitation of subjects to 
himself alone. The State affords no proof of a primi- 
tive gregarious instinct in man. Its origin is not due 
to any instinct to combine and live in a society; its 
development was not conditioned by the love of neigh- 
bours or the sentiment of solidarity. On the con- 
trary, it was invented by selfishness, and carried out by 
force as the machinery of parasitism. It is upheld by 
the advantages of order and a general division of 
labour, by the adaptability of man, by the power of 
habit, which gradually forms and transforms everything 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 205 

it touches, and even interpenetrates the emotional life 
of man, and by the fact that while the majority are 
dull, utterly incapable of comprehending the causal 
connection between a number of effects, cowardly and 
indisposed to effort, the minority, on the contrary, are 
parasites, filled with a lively sense of their own ad- 
vantage that sharpens their reason on the practical 
side, and makes them fertile in expedients for carrying 
out their ends. They are fully aware of their superior- 
ity, and occasionlly even incautious enough to boast of 
it — as, for example, when the Minister, von Rochow, 
forgot himself so far as to let slip the words, " the 
limited intellect of subjects." 



CHAPTER VI 

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 

All political and social institutions government, the 
payment of taxes, service, obedience, law and its en- 
forcement, compulsory attendance at school, and the 
mechanism of trade, as well as the State itself, represent 
the gradual manifestation of a single force, provide the 
necessary means by which a strong personality exploits 
its fellows for its own ends. But there is another 
order of phenomena, whose aim was not originally 
parasitic, and which did not arise out of violence: the 
religious feehngs, their expressions, and the positive 
creeds, ceremonies, and priestly orders into which they 
have crystaUized. 

The religious feelings are, like the tendency to para- 
sitism, deeply and subtly rooted in the instinct of self- 
preservation, but they early pursued an independent and 
separate growth. The instinct of self-preservation in 
man was not forced into the parasitic channel until 
natural conditions, becoming unfavourable and even 
positively hostile, imposed upon him the painful neces- 
sity of labour. The religious feeling, on the other 
hand, was undoubtedly active in primitive man, even 
while nature abundantly satisfied his wants. Even had 
the Ice Age never supervened to threaten him with 
death by cold and starvation, it would have developed 

206 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 207 

and differentiated. Ignorance alone can account for 
Volney's childish assertion that religion was invented by- 
priests, or for the question whether there are peoples 
who have no religion. Such people cannot exist, since 
religious ideas are formed as the result of biological 
necessity. To make this plain, the true nature of the 
religious feelings must be discerned. 

I have said that the religious feeling is deeply 
grounded in the instinct of self-preservation. This in- 
stinct expresses itself, on the one hand, in a hunger for 
knowledge; on the other, in a clinging to life. The 
desire to investigate the nature of its environment Is 
proper to every living thing whose development has 
gone beyond a merely passive tropism. In which Internal 
movements and changes proceed In response to external 
physical and chemical Influences, without any apparent 
intervention of consciousness or will. It is the condi- 
tion of that differentiated life which no creature can 
attain without active Investigation Into environment, 
and the endeavour to obtain from it a variety of sense 
Impressions which are there compared, combined, and 
interpreted. 

It Is only through the constant activity of curiosity 
that the knowledge of actuality possible at any stage of 
development Is acquired by the living creature, and with 
it the art of discovering such conditions as are useful, 
and avoiding such as are dangerous to It. In this way It 
learns to protect Itself against all the harms that 
threaten Its existence, and to provide all that Is neces- 
sary for its maintenance. Including all sorts of pleasures. 
As the living thing develops, and Its needs become more 
complex, its knowledge must become more various and 



2o8 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

delicate, and the curiosity, of which that knowledge is 
the fruit, stronger and more constant. At the lowest 
stage of consciousness curiosity can include form and 
content in the simple question "What?" The living 
thing wishes to know the properties of the phenomena 
that enter the field of its consciousness. At a higher 
stage the question becomes "How?" It is no longer 
satisfied to perceive the qualities of phenomena through 
the senses; it seeks also to know the relations of these 
qualities to one another, the order in which the 
phenomena occur, the connection perceptible between 
them, and the extent to which they are interdependent. 
Finally, at the highest stage the question is "Why?" 
The living thing no longer solely wishes to know what 
lies before it, and the manner in which phenomena are 
observed to pass before experience; it seeks to discern 
their cause, and to understand the reason which com- 
pels everything to be as it is and prevents it from being 
otherwise. 

The question "What?" can be answered by the 
senses, expressing themselves through the centre of per- 
ception. But the answer to the question " How? " can- 
not be given by mere perception. It transcends the im- 
mediate evidence of the senses. For it, the images 
stored in the memory must be called up and associated, 
former impressions compared, sifted and selected, and 
the judgment thence acquired must then be tested by 
comparison with reality — that is, with new sense per- 
ceptions. This premises the existence of higher centres 
of association and co-ordination. A satisfactory solu- 
tion to the question " Why? " is not to be obtained from 
the immediate perceptions of the senses. The reason of 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 209 

things lies outside of sense experience. It Is not imme- 
diately perceptible. It can only be divined or deduced. 
Such an Intuition, such a supposition, such knowledge of 
it as Is possible at all, must be the work of the intellect, 
which creates from the material available in perception 
something new, not actually existing — a concept. An 
Intellectual representation of the relation that does or 
may subsist between each phenomenon and those that 
have gone before or follow after it can only be obtained 
through the concept. Experiences, when thus grouped 
under concepts, form orders of ideas that Include all the 
concepts relative to the phenomena whose regular con- 
nection has to be Investigated. Those concepts that are 
obviously incompatible will be eliminated by the con- 
sciousness. If sane and attentive. This task Is intel- 
lectual, and it Is only rendered possible by the develop- 
ment of the faculty of abstract thought. 

Error as to the "What" is hardly possible. The 
organism has only to determine such concrete charac- 
ters of phenomena as the development of Its percep- 
tive apparatus permits, and unless this is in some 
way diseased, it will not refuse Its office — that Is, 
give inaccurate Information or none at all, fail 
to respond, or produce hallucinations. In that case 
only will the living thing fail to obtain the pos- 
sible and necessary information about its environ- 
ment. 

But the answer to the question "How?" Is more 
liable to be false. Let but one link In the chain of indi- 
vidual phenomena under observation be overlooked 
through fatigue or carelessness, or underestimated by 
the attention. A fruitful source of error, too. Is found 



2IO THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

in the tendency to argue by analogy. There is often no 
concrete connection even between wholly external 
phenomena : the passage of an electric current along a 
wire, or the sounding of a distant bell in response to 
pressure on a knob near at hand, cannot be immediately 
perceived by our senses, but have to be guessed at and 
explained by comparison with other phenomena that do 
fall within the field of direct observation. The analogy 
may easily be fallacious. A false or misleading inter- 
pretation of external features may suggest a similarity 
where none exists, and lead to the interpretation of the 
unknown by a known that has nothing in common 
with it. 

To take only one example. Leibnitz was aware that 
an impulse of the will, developed in the brain, passes 
along the nerves, and sets up muscular contractions. 
How does this take place? At that time the only in- 
stance known of the transmission of energy to a point 
far removed from Its source was that of a mechanical 
connection set up by a pull or pressure. The standard 
instance of this system is a bell-pull. You pull a handle, 
a wire or cord carries on the movement, and a bell at 
some distance connected with the cord rings. On this 
plan Leibnitz then explained the action of the will upon 
the muscles. The will gives a pull in the brain, the 
nerves transmit it like a wire, and the muscles vibrate 
like the bell. Later the theory of electricity was de- 
veloped. The words " electric stream " and " electric 
current " appeared. A new analogy suggested itself : 
that of a system of pipes conveying a fluid, as in the case 
of an aqueduct or canal. Since the physiologists in the 
latter half of the nineteenth century regarded the ac- 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 2n 

tivity of the nerves as a manifestation of electricity, 
they all spoke of the nervous fluicj, and conceived of the 
energy of the will as being transmitted from the brain, 
along the nerves, to the muscles, in the manner in which 
a message is forwarded by the telegraphic apparatus 
along the wires to the receiving station. Nowadays the 
analogy of the telegram is dismissed with a smile, like 
Leibnitz's notion of the bell, the tendency being to 
suppose that chemical changes take place in the nerves, 
and are transmitted from one end to the other at the, 
rate of about ten metres a second. This suggests the 
mode of ignition exemplified by a lampwick or a train 
of gunpowder. Probably this analogy is no more ac- 
curate as a description of what goes on in the nervous 
system than the bell-pull or the telegraphic wire. Thus 
the answer to the question "How?" though often in- 
exact, will satisfy the questioner in the absence of known 
facts which invalidate it. 

In the question " Why? " the senses can give no help 
at all. It is all supposition, guesswork, matter of 
opinion. Yet we have a persistent desire to know not 
only how, but why, things are as they are. The experi- 
ences of our consciousness, which presents events to us 
as conditioned by one another, and therefore as causally 
connected, enslaves our thought to the notion of causal- 
ity; the conviction is permanently imposed upon us that 
every phenomenon has some necessary and sufficient 
cause in a preceding one; we cannot rest without some 
idea of the nature of this cause. As to the adequacy 
of this idea, we are hardly ever in a position to decide, 
since we cannot investigate a connection that lies outside 
the senses. It is developed from the knowledge at our 



212 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

disposal, and we are content if it is not contradicted by 
any part of it. 

Every organism within the limits of its capacity asks 
"What?" for unless it could and did perpetually in- 
vestigate the character of its environment, it could not 
maintain its existence for a moment. Curiosity as to 
" How " belongs at least to the higher vertebrates. 
Comparatively complicated phenomena, like a trap or 
the mystery of a closed manger-door, do certainly fall 
within their observation. But the desire to know why 
is the privilege of man alone. It is, I must add, a priv- 
ilege hitherto entirely profitless. For all his investiga- 
tion and thought, all his observation and guesswork, 
man has not advanced by one hair's-breadth ; we are no 
nearer knowing the real cause of a single phenomenon 
than our ancestors in the first Stone Age. The endless 
search for the cause of things may have had a heuristic 
value, but even so much is not certain. It is quite pos- 
sible that we should have all the knowledge we now 
possess had we been content, instead of searching for 
the cause of things that must for ever elude our search, 
carefully to observe their order, their mutual relation so 
far as it can be perceptible by the senses, and the quali- 
tative and quantitative mechanics of their interaction. 
This assumption seems the more probable since such 
knowledge as we do possess has been, as a matter of 
fact, attained without the cognizance of a single cause — 
or, we may say, of the single cause, since probably there 
is only one. All our knowledge but goes to prove that 
we have been able to establish all sorts of facts, 
and to test their exactitude by useful Inventions, 
without the slightest suspicion of the cause, even in the 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 213 

case of those that are under our control. Our results 
therefore serve us, although we do not know their cause, 
and, indeed, as far as we can judge, we suffer in no way 
from our ignorance on this point. Without knowing 
anything of the cause of magnetism in the earth we con- 
structed the compass, which made navigation secure. 
Without knowing the cause of the relation expressed in 
Carnot's second formula, we have built steam-engines 
of the most perfect kind, on the principle that mechan- 
ical power is created by a warm body acting upon a cold 
one. Kepler knew nothing of attraction, yet he discov- 
ered his three laws which enabled the movements of the 
planets to be calculated exactly without explaining them 
at all. Soon afterwards Newton discovered the law of 
gravitation, again without any idea of the nature of 
attraction — that is, of the cause of the phenomenon 
which he had reduced to an algebraic expression. Ob- 
servation of natural phenonena is a necessity of our ex- 
istence, but knowledge of the cause of phenomena is not 
necessary for this observation, and the desire for it is 
not biological in its origin, not an expression of the 
instinct of self-preservation at all. It is the logical out- 
come of the nature of our consciousness, and the fact 
that our thought is governed by the law of causality. 
Only the dullard can fail to draw the conclusion from 
its premises, and trace a result back to the assumptions 
on which it rests. The highly civilized man does not 
resist a tendency which becomes a positive compulsion 
in the select few. To-day advanced and strictly ration- 
alistic thinkers compel themselves to resist their natural 
tendency to conform to the logical habit of seeking for 
final causes. They have arrived at the conclusion that, 



214 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

since this final cause lies outside human experience, and 
beyond its comprehension, reflection upon it must be 
fruitless/ It is, moreover, only a survival of an old 
delusion to speak of the final cause only as eluding our 
intelligence; the adjective may go: the first and nearest 
cause of phenomena is as unattainable, as incompre- 
hensible, as the final. Indeed, as I said above, there is 
only one cause, at once the first and the last, that has 
operated from all eternity, and will operate to all eter- 
nity. We only imagine that we may be able to discover 
and understand a first cause because philosophers, as 
well as uneducated, home-taught thinkers, confuse the 
cause of phenomena and their concrete concomitants. 
We are satisfied with saying, " The reason why this 
glass breaks is that it was pushed off the table "; "The 
reason why that dog howls is that someone trod on his 
tail," But in such a statement we fail to distinguish the 
mere succession of events and their occasion from the 
reason of their occurrence. The reason why the glass 
breaks is not the push which sends it off the table, but the 
law of gravitation, which determines its movement in 
space, together with the conditions of the molecular 
composition of the two bodies — namely, the hardness 
of the ground and the insufficient resistance of the glass. 
And beyond this there lies the further question of the 
constitution of matter. Thus we are, all unaware of it, 
confronted with the riddle of the universe, and unex- 
pectedly find ourselves face to face with that final cause 

* Auguste Comte, " Systeme de Politique Positive," Paris, 1851, vol. 
i., p. 134: "Research seeks to discover the how, never the why; to 
discover laws, not causes. . . . The word ' cause ' must be banished 
from the vocabulary of true philosophy." 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 215 

which even the home-taught thinker sees to be unat- 
tainable. It is the same, too, with the howling dog, 
which raises the whole question of life and sensation, or 
with any phenomenon whatever. The reasonable course 
therefore would be to abandon speculation as to final 
causes. That, however, is now perhaps not within our 
power. Certainly it was not within the power of 
earlier men, who had not learned to examine the con- 
tents of their consciousness with care and distinguish 
sharply between concepts. They could not escape the 
compelling idea of a " Why? " They had to seek for 
the cause of things, and since it is agonizing to leave un- 
answered a question that is always coming up and al- 
ways present to the consciousness, the answer was such as 
the stage of their knowledge permitted them to find or 
to invent. 

The readiest explanation was that known as the hy- 
pothesis of the Demiurgos, which Plato has developed 
with great expenditure of rhetoric. Primitive man 
could not clothe his vague Ideas in the polished language 
of the Athenian philosopher, but his arguments were 
much the same as Plato's. When he saw an implement 
of stone, he knew that someone must have made it, even 
though he had not been there to see it done. Generaliz- 
ing this theory, he deduced from it that all that exists 
must, like his implement, have been made by somebody. 
By whom? By some unknown creator, craftsman, or 
artist — a Demiurgos. Plato failed to see the fallacy of 
this generalization; how should it have been perceived; 
by primitive man, whose unpractised thought generally 
proceeded by a series of leaps? He did not see the 
horns of this dilemma — either everything that exists 



2i6 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

must have a creator, a Demiurgos, in which case the 
Demiurgos must have one, and the creator of the 
Demiurgos, and so on for ever in an endless chain too 
ludicrous to be conceived; or, not everything that exists 
must have a creator — there can be something that has 
existed for all time, uncreated. In this case the assump- 
tion of the Demiurgos is unnecessary. The universe 
itself may be the eternal, uncreated — an idea no more 
and no less impossible than that of an eternal, uncreated 
Demiurgos. The extraordinary thing is that Plato 
provides his Demiurgos with material that has existed 
for all eternity, of which to make the world, and then 
deduces from the existence of this world, that he has 
himself declared eternal, the necessity for a creator, al- 
though, by his own assumption, the creator need create 
nothing, merely adapt what exists. 

Primitive man did not thus criticize his own effort to 
understand the cause of the world. He satisfied his 
search for the why of the universe by the answer: " The 
world exists because a master-craftsman created and 
maintains it." He made an idea of this creator for 
himself. As a rule he imagined him in human form, 
but sometimes as a huge beast before whom he went in 
fear. The greatness of the works of the unknown 
creator proved him to be of huge strength and power. 
Man's anthropomorphism was easily satisfied with a 
world creator in human form; his wretched conception 
of the Demiurgos proves the poverty of his imagination. 
He simply gave it the attributes, on an immensely exag- 
gerated scale, of man, of terrifying wild beasts, or 
astonishing natural phenomena. The chief in whose 
territory he dwelt provided him with his type. The 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 217 

features of the Demiurgos were those of a prehistoric 
ruler and conqueror. He was stronger, more courage- 
ous, fiercer, and more cruel than other creatures. He 
demanded unconditional obedience. All must be sub- 
servient to his will. He was only to be approached with 
the mien of abject humility proper to the vanquished, 
trembling for his life and suing for mercy, hands up- 
raised to show that they bore no weapons, body kneeling 
or prone upon the ground, ready for the lord to set his 
foot upon the neck or strike it with the deadly stroke. 
He was jealous, suspicious, angry, incalculably moody, 
greedy, and vain. To keep him in a good humour it was 
necessary to load him with gifts, and offer him the most 
cherished treasure one possessed. He could be most 
effectually propitiated by human sacrifice. Prayers, en- 
treaties, or grovelling flattery might soften his wrath, 
and he was never weary of noisy and fulsome praise. 
Barefaced flattery, unworthy adulation, and slavish sub- 
servience were the most hopeful means of turning aside 
his blood-thirsty wrath, and even of obtaining favour 
and protection against enemies, and his assistance in any 
plan of war, plunder, or reprisal. The godheads of the 
earliest mythology preserve the traits of the prehistoric 
and primitive chief. When we have studied the sacri- 
ficial rites, the incantations, prayers, hymns, and cere- 
monies of religion, we have as complete a picture of 
the relations between our remote ancestors and their 
chiefs as if we had seen them with our own eyes. One 
observation, that seems strangely enough to have 
escaped the sociologists, should be made at this point. 
The traditional ideas of the creator throw upon the 
dark background of the past an extraordinarily vivid 



2i8 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

picture of the primitive warrior, conqueror, and ex- 
ploiter of the weak. They do more than that. They 
cast a strong light on the primitive constitution of 
human life, and afford an overwhelmingly powerful 
witness to the fact that men, instead of originally form- 
ing a horde of equal beings with equal rights, led to 
battle by some strong man, but ruled by no one, must, 
as far back as the memory of the species goes, have been 
unequal in might and right, ordered in ranks, and con- 
trolled by authority. This authority may have been at 
first the head of the family. Before long it was as- 
suredly the violent, plundering conqueror and despot, 
who subdued to his service all he could reach by the 
might of his arm or overcome by his warriors. His 
subjects trembled before him In perpetual, abject fear 
of death, much as the people of Dahomey must have 
done before their king, previous to the French conquest. 

How could men who lived free and equal In hordes 
that shifted from place to place at their own sweet will 
ever have found in their experience the idea of a mighty 
God whose frequent anger had to be propitiated by cur- 
rish fawning, supplication, flattery, and sacrifice, who 
could be quieted by threats and circumvented by deceit? 
— an idea quite natural to a pack of slaves, who imag- 
ined their God in the image of the despotic ruler who 
cracked the whip above their heads. 

This model has prevailed down to the present day. 
Man did not create God, to use Feuerbach's well-known 
phrase, in his own Image, but In the image of a certain 
human type, the chief or king. He always believed In 
a monarchical government and creation of the world. 
The development of the Idea of God proceeded along 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 219 

the lines of the development of monarchy. The canni- 
bal monster of prehistoric and primitive times gradually 
became the civilized ruler. Instead of butchering slaves 
and striking off heads with his own hands, wading in 
blood and claiming every woman in his domain for his 
harem, he sets before himself an ideal of goodness and 
wisdom, recognizes duties to his subjects, watches over 
justice and order within his territory, and finds pleasure 
in performing the office of a natural Providence so far 
as to bring unlooked-for happiness into the lives of 
individuals. So the God of human imagination ceased 
to resemble a greedy, cruel, and coarsely sensual negro 
chief, and gradually became an enlightened being, all 
gentleness and love, like an Augustus, whom the Syrian 
Greeks called iSwri^p, the Saviour; a Marcus Aurellus, 
whose stoicism has Influenced sixty generations of 
thoughtful men, and Influences them to-day; an Alfred, 
on whom love and veneration conferred the name of 
Great, or St. Louis, reverenced as the embodiment of 
justice. The world-ruler was surrounded, on the model 
of an earthly being, by a court of nobles and worthies, 
the archangels and saints, and a bodyguard of angels. 
The Greek gods carried on wars, and won glorious vic- 
tories over rebellious giants. Later religions conceived 
of neighbouring rulers and rival kings carrying on 
Inherited feuds (Ahora Mazda and Ahrlman), or 
rebels, who were overthrown and condemned to eternal 
Incarceration In subterranean dungeons (Lucifer). The 
source of all these fantastic images was the same — the 
necessity to co-ordinate and explain phenomena In a 
single cause, the desire to know, which Is the Instinct 
of self-preservation on the Intellectual side. The Idea 



220 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

of God is the earliest answer given by the species, with 
the knowledge then at its disposal, to the constant ques- 
tion as to the why of the world and of life, and it is the 
answer that the majority of the species still finds satis- 
factory/ 

But the desire to know is not the sole expression of 
the instinct of self-preservation. There is another, 
stronger and more immediate — the desire for life, the 
fierce, almost desperate, clinging to existence. This 
desire for life is the second psychological root of reli- 
gious feeling. Man must very early have awakened to 
the aspect of life that presented itself to the Buddha 
Siddharta in the well-known encounters on his walk 
through the gardens of Kapilavastu. He passed in turn 
a broken and decrepit old man, a suffering sick man, and 
a funeral procession. His fourth encounter is not rele- 
vant here. He recognized the eternal enemies that for 
ever threaten and finally destroy the comfort, happiness, 
and life of man — age and its infirmity, disease, and 
most fearful of all, death. Man, like the Sakya Muni, 
has always been troubled by these enemies, which have 
caused most painful reflections in thoughtful minds. 

He has probably submitted with least resistance to 
the doom of growing old. It comes on slowly, almost 

' Beda Venerabilis (" Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, book 
ii., chap, xiii.) gives a charming concrete example of the desire to know 
in man, and the childish credulity with which any would-be explana- 
tion is accepted. Before King Edwin's council an English nobleman 
recommended that the religion brought by the Papal Legate Paulinus 
should be accepted, on the ground, " Here below the life of man 
seems tolerable, but of what comes after and what has gone before 
we know naught. If the new teaching have some tidings thereof 
to give us, I think we shall do right to accept it." 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 221 

unperceived. Since the decay of the faculties corre- 
sponds to an ebb in all the needs and desires for which 
they are necessary, its gradual progress is not vividly 
present to the consciousness. At the dawn of reflection, 
old age was perceived to be the law of life, subject to no 
exception. Human thought is habitually satisfied with 
things as it has always known them, and does not go 
further to ask whether they must always be so. Never- 
theless, even the law of age does sometimes meet with a 
dull resistance, especially in those cases where any feel- 
ing outlives its natural means of satisfaction. Man 
longs for eternal youth. He can find no more wonderful 
and enviable attribute with which to endow his Gods. 
His desires are revealed by the fairy-tales of the foun- 
tain of Youth, the philosopher's stone, or the magic 
herbs of Medea — proof of the pleasure he finds in 
dreaming of delights denied to him by nature. 

Of sickness he was much more impatient. His habit 
of thought led him to see an analogy between his bodily 
sufferings and the wounds and bruises that he got in 
hunting or at war. He knew the cause of these injuries 
to be the armed foe or wild beast, and imagined a 
similar cause for his internal and cutaneous diseases. 
They must be the effect of an attack from some enemy 
or evil being who was not human. The enemy who 
brought such infirmities upon him was the more uncanny 
from the fact that he was invisible to his prey, who 
could form no idea of his nature, his weapons, nor the 
time and place of his attack. This extraordinarily cun- 
ning foe inspired him, because unknown, with a far 
greater terror than the warrior he met In the open field 
or the wild beast that fell upon him with teeth and 



222 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

claws, horns and hooves. It naturally occurred to him 
to try to pacify the enemy, against whom he could not 
defend himself, by presents, sacrifices, and prayers. The 
suggestion of wise men, or those whom he thought to 
be wise, that he should oppose the unseen foe by a 
stronger foe of the same order, accorded well with his 
habits of thought. He tried then to secure this all-wise, 
invisible ally and protector, and imagined everything 
that was incomprehensible, mysterious, and dark, such 
as magical incantations, extraordinary rites, and every 
kind of hocus-pocus, to be the appropriate means to that 
end. 

Before death man was helpless. His reason could 
not comprehend that he must cease to be and disappear, 
leaving no trace. His feelings struggled feverishly 
against such a doom. Although constantly faced with 
the spectacle of death and corruption, he persuaded him- 
self that this condition did not imply an end of existence. 
He concluded, from the extremely superficial resem- 
blance between the sleeping and the dead, that death 
was a kind of sleep from which there was an awakening, 
only that the sleep was deeper and the awakening longer 
in coming. His dream-life, in which he saw those who 
had died, mingled and spoke with them, suggested to 
him that the dead continued to exist, returning at night 
to visit the living, while during the day they resided in 
some place unknown. He pondered how the dead man 
whom he had seen buried, decomposed or consumed by 
fire, came to visit him in his dreams, sound and whole, 
even younger and more comely than in life. Naturally 
enough he invented the notion of a second being, in 
which the principle of life itself resided, which inhabited 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 223 

the human body, could live on in separation from it, and 
appear to the living man in dreams. Further develop- 
ments of this same invention are the Egyptian idea of a 
spiritual double, reappearing in the astral body of con- 
temporary occultism; the Hellenistic conception of a 
shadowy existence in the under-world; the belief In the 
migratory soul, perpetually reincarnated, which Is found 
among many primitive peoples, and is widespread, 
especially in India — which occurs even in SchellIng, and 
is found where one Is almost horrified to discover It, In 
a thinker generally so lucid as Lessing ("The Educa- 
tion of the Human Race") ; and, Indeed, the general 
conception of the existence of the soul, of Immortality, 
of Heaven, and of Hell. No single fact supporting any 
of these hypotheses — the existence of the soul. Its Im- 
mortality, Its sojourn in a supra-mundane realm — has 
ever been cited in a material or Intellectual form 
capable of analysis by a thinker worthy of being called 
one. Nevertheless, the majority go on persuading each 
other without any thought of proof. They are satisfied 
with assurances and assertions. The argument con- 
stantly reiterated by theologians, and even by philoso- 
phers,^ is enough for them. *' We have such an im- 
perious desire for immortality, and so strong an inward 
conviction of existence of our spiritual personality after 
death, that we cannot possibly be deceived about 
it." 

Were anyone to say, " I am quite certain that I shall 
one day be rich; I have an Intense desire for it, and a 

^ Popular philosophers, it is true. The argument quoted above 
appears in M. Mendlessohn's "Phsedo; or, The Immortality of the 
Soul." 



224 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

secret voice whispers to me that my desire will be real- 
ized," he would be laughed at, and his conviction cer- 
tainly not credited. Yet this secret voice, this Intense 
desire, are considered sufficient security for personal 
Immortality. That is to say, we wish to be convinced. 
We are angry with a level-headed critic who tries to 
dissipate the dream of immortality. All our dread of 
death makes us cling to the idea of escaping It by some 
fabulous privilege. Yet, all the time these pleasant 
and comforting Ideas are being built up by our eager 
desire for continued existence, and co-ordinated Into a 
system that formally satisfies the logical demand of our 
consciousness up to a certain point, the life-instinct re- 
mains constantly aware that all these dreams of a soul. 
Immortality, and the hereafter, are but cobwebs. Their 
specious defiance of death falls to pieces before its un- 
conquerable horror of It. The Idea of Immortality may 
have made death easier to many who found comfort in 
it. But the thought of his own death fills the most 
convinced believer with a terror that Is meaningless if 
the grave be really the door into a new, eternal life, no 
longer shadowed by the fear of death. 

The desire to know, appearing in the consciousness as 
a perpetual question, " Why? " produced the invention 
of the Demiurgos as an adequate living cause of all 
phenomena, while the life-instinct, unable to do away 
with the Inexorable fact of death, has invented personal 
Immortality. These two systems of ideas, centering in 
the belief In God and Immortality, necessarily coalesced. 
Alike divorced from perception and observation, resting 
upon no basis of fact, Including no element of experi- 
ence, pure products of the imagination, stimulated by 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 225 

an emotional desire, they take their rise from and de- 
velop in the same circles of thought and feeling, and 
inevitably combine. 

The way In which men picture God and their own 
immortal essence depends upon and varies with the 
general knowledge and views of the time. In pre-civ- 
ilized times God was conceived as a violent tribal chief- 
tain; later He became a constitutional ruler, a judge, a 
loving father. The definite form and outline of the pic- 
ture became blurred; Its colour faded away, and the 
whole melted to a shadowy image compatible with any 
view, even with that of science. Spinoza regarded God, 
whom he stripped of personality and Its most Import- 
ant attribute, consciousness, as synonymous with the 
universe; Schelling made Him an Absolute, which con- 
veyed no Idea at all to himself or anyone else; others 
excluded Him from the world, and left Him only an 
incomprehensible existence outside of Being ^ in some 
sphere of pure spirituality (whatever that may be), 
entirely disconnected from the sphere of phenomena. 
Finally, the use of a jargon, remote alike from thought 
and from reality, gave currency to the phrase, so often 
repeated in the last decades, that faith has nothing to do 
with knowledge, that they occupy distinct provinces in 
the realm of thought. Certainly a knowledge that rests 
upon the verifiable basis of experience has nothing to 
do with a faith whose content, even when dignified by 
the name of " Inward events," is really from beginning 
to end nothing but subjective Invention. The formula 

^ Frederic de Rougemont, " Les Deux Cites," two volumes, Paris, 
1874, vol. i., p. i: "Eternity dwells outside of time and of space. 
Pure spirit exists nowhere. Immutable, it is always the same." 



226 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

is, however, inadmissible, becauses it suggests that faith 
and knowledge, though different from and independent 
of each other, possess equal value. To assume this is to 
put dream, chimera, and delirium on the same level as 
the results of strict observation and the evidence ob- 
tained from the senses after careful examination and 
experiment. Where that is done, the desire for knowl- 
edge is still instinctive and obscure. It has not sub- 
mitted to criticism, tested itself by actual facts, and 
risen to a desire for truth. 

The process which has refined and spiritualized faith 
in a Demiurgos almost out of existence was extended to 
the idea of the soul and its immortality. The ideas are 
naturally connected. From the very first the assump- 
tion of the presence in the body of another substance, 
not identical with it, but of a finer essence, suggested 
that this substance survived the death of the body. 
Originally this idea was crude and childish, like the 
belief in God. Primitive man thought of his soul as the 
shadow of his body ; it was uncanny like anything vague 
and unknown. He imagined it possessed of super- 
human power, but also full of malice, cruelty, and all 
other evil qualities. As a rule, he had little doubt of its 
intention of torturing the living and doing them all 
possible harm. Only where ancestor worship was in- 
troduced was the reasonable conclusion drawn that 
parents and ancestors at least had no reason to be evilly 
disposed towards their children and descendants, so long 
as they paid them due honour and allowed them to want 
for nothing; that their souls, instead of being fearful, 
might be looked to for kindness and protection. But 
apart from this special case, the departed spirit was 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 227 

either, as the Greeks imagined, a poor, pitiable shadow 
that dragged out a joyless existence in the chill dark- 
ness, glad of a drink of warm blood, and powerless to 
help itself or the living; or, as all races that live in a 
state of nature believe to this day, and most races doubt- 
less believed before they were civilized, a wild and fear- 
some ghost, happily only permitted to rage at night and 
in certain spots, against which there were various 
means of defence. The spirits could be propitiated, like 
their more powerful and terrifying God, by sacrifices, 
secret words, magic formulae and incantations, and kept 
at bay and baffled in the execution of their fell intents 
by rites and amulets, whose symbolism lies outside the 
limits of this work. 

This imagery presented no difficulty so long as the 
earth was conceived of as a hollow orb, and the heavens 
as a crystal roof above it. There was convenient room 
for an under and upper world, peopled respectively with 
ghosts and demons, Gods, angels, and saints. Con- 
fusion arose, however, when the Copernican theory 
taught that the world was a ball, rotating on its axis, 
and swinging free in space. The fancied Paradise and 
Hell had to be removed. The under-world, instead of 
being under the earth, was placed in its unknown in- 
terior; the upper world was transferred from the un- 
imaginable ether above the visible arch of heaven to 
other heavenly bodies remote from earth — the sun, and 
stars. This idea, far from being confined to the senti- 
mentality of ignorant people, is found in Schelling 
among others. There are professional exponents of the 
worship of words who take his confused and meaning- 
less verbosity for philosophy, even for science ! Accord- 



228 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

ing to a more subtle interpretation, which skilfully 
eliminated from the idea any kernel of meaning, the 
soul, having no extension, is an effluence from God, into 
whom it is resumed on the death of the body. By 
means of this senseless formula the need of any place 
for its abode is got rid of. But even thus sublimated, 
the soul retains the trace of its descent from the crude 
spook of primitive man, and its origin In the repugnance 
of the consciousness to its own annihilation. 

Such Is the natural history of religion, apart from the 
mysticism In which the whole of this important province 
of biology and psychology has been smothered. It 
arose from the desire for knowledge, which is a form of 
the instinct for survival, and Immediately from the 
Instinct for survival itself.^ These two roots are firmly 
fixed in consciousness and subconsciousness. Man will 
always desire knowledge. His thirst for It can only 
cease with the realization of one of two highly Improb- 
able hypotheses^ — ^omniscIence, or dull resignation to 

* Lucretius's famous statement, quoted by Feuerbach, " Primus in 
orbe Deos timor fecit " — " It was fear that first made Gods upon 
the earth " — is highly superficial, and fails to reach the psychic 
sources of the phenomenon described. The whole of the admired 
Fifth Book of the " De Rerum Natura " is merely the expansion of 
this notion that belief in Gods arose from the terror aroused by 
the vast spectacle of nature (" Unde etiam nunc est mortalibus 
insitus horror," etc. ..." cui non animus formidine divum — Con- 
trahitur, cui non conrepunt membra pavore — Fulminis horribili 
quum plaga torrida tellus — Contremunt," etc.). But this fear is only 
a special case of the general law of the life force expressed negatively 
in the fear of death. Thunder and lightning did not suggest that 
Gods existed: it was the fear of death which was brought before man 
by the thunder and lightning, and threatened him in them, that sug- 
gested such thoughts. Moreover, the fear of death is but one source 
of faith. It also arose from curiosity to know the reason of things. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 229 

ignorance. He will, moreover, always cling to life. 
Apart from the rational recognition of the worth of 
existence resulting from reflection, the life-process dif- 
fuses through all the cells of his being a constant sense 
of pleasure, which he could not renounce or even con- 
ceive of renouncing without a kind of horror. In old 
age the pleasure of existence declines as the life-process 
in the cells loses its strength and regularity. When 
it is no longer the dominant note in the kinaesthe- 
sis of the body, the desire for life is gradually extin- 
guished, and gives way to an indifference that be- 
comes a need for repose and even a positive desire for 
death. 

The permanent pleasure of existence may again be 
overthrown or extinguished by the bodily and mental 
distress caused by sickness or moral disaster, and in that 
case desire is transferred from the preservation to the 
annihilation of life. These exceptions, however, apart, 
the desire for life is always present, and the idea that the 
extinction of personality can neither be avoided nor de- 
layed is intolerable alike to consciousness and feeling. 
Therefore, man will always try to explain phenomena, 
reflect on the cause, or at least on the connection and 
order of events, revel in the joys of existence, and 
shudder before the horror of death; for the religious 
feeling within him inexorably forces these questions 
upon him and he must listen to his own soul. That his 
strongest emotions are associated with it is obvious from 
its very nature. Strong emotions are aroused by any- 
thing that affects the deep roots of life, whence both 
consciousness and personality grow and draw their 
strength. The laws of association, moreover, explain 



230 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

how an extraordinary emotion, even if it originate in 
some other source, will rouse the basic emotion that 
vibrates between life and death, and gather force from 
it. Therefore a religious note sounds in the deeper 
notes of great love, profound passion, desperate fear, 
and the mighty impression produced by the beautiful 
and the sublime; and since thought is influenced by 
sentiments, even to some extent polarized by them, it is 
clear that any religious excitement that penetrates the 
soul with a sense of the mystery of life and its im- 
pending doom will occupy the consciousness with this 
question of eternity, and cause the ideas to group them- 
selves into fantastic inventions, suppositions, surmises, 
dreams, or ordered systems. Religious emotion leads 
the thoughts away from reality and experience into a 
world of dreams. There is something of a religious 
character in any dream that draws the consciousness 
away from the region of natural percepts and judgments 
to wander over the boundless ocean of imagination. It 
is very pronounced when the brain is engaged in artistic 
invention or any of those sesthetic functions that are 
biologically connected with the emotions of sex. Joy, 
wonder, excitement, agitation, longing, devotion — all 
thfcse spring from the same subconscious root as the 
religious emotion. When the religious mood is height- 
ened, as it may be, to enthusiasm, ecstasy, or transfigura- 
tion, the different elements are almost indistinguishably 
fused. 

Religious feeling arose in man when his intellectual 
development led him to ask the question " Why? " and 
forced the fact of death upon him. It is an open ques- 
tion whether it will be extinguished when man finally 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 231 

realizes that it is quite useless to seek to know the causes 
of phenomena, and directs his desire for knowledge to 
other attainable ends, and when his Instinctive repug- 
nance to the dissolution of his personality subsides, and 
he learns to think with indifference of his inevitable 
end. Even then, in all probability, the old longings and 
anxieties of primitive man will break atavistically upon 
the reason at its task, like snatches of some distant 
melody that will seem beautiful and lofty and worthy of 
being fostered by art. This notion was expressed by 
Dr. F. Strauss ("The Old Faith and the New: a 
Confession"), by M. Guyau ("DTrreliglon de I'Ave- 
nir "), and by myself (" Conventional Lies of Our Civ- 
ilization "). We found ourselves in agreement in hold- 
ing that in the civilization of the future, art would take 
the place of faith, and concerts, plays, exhibitions, and 
aesthetic celebrations of every sort, that of the Church 
service. Certainly the ideas originally called up by the 
religious sentiment will lose their connection with it, and 
gradually fade away. 

A sentiment so strong, deep, and general as the re- 
ligious naturally could not fail to Influence the mutual 
relations of mankind; but its influence has been enor- 
mously exaggerated. Dozens of would-be philosophic 
historians have, with an air of great wisdom, repeated 
Goethe's very arbitrary statement that all wars have 
been wars of religion. Schelling saw in religion the 
real content of history. Bunsen regarded it as its 
earliest and strongest motive force. All the facts are 
against them. It was not from religious motives that 
the Romans first attacked and defeated their neighbours 
in Central Italy, then conquered Italy, and finally the 



232 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

whole world, but from the desire for profit and mastery 
— i.e., from the parasitic impulse. 

Religious motives are far to seek in the migrations by 
which the European States were formed. The Mongol 
invasion in the Middle Ages certainly had nothing to do 
with religion, and only far-fetched sophistry of the most 
specious kind could discover any religious motives In the 
revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. There are so many 
political, economic, and social causes to be taken into 
consideration even in those wars that appear to have 
been fought on religious grounds, such as the seven 
hundred years' struggle of the Iberians, Romans, and 
Goths against the Moors in Spain, the Crusades, and 
the Thirty Years' War, that a closer examination dimin- 
ishes the part played by religion even there. The real 
truth Is that any emotion common to men draws them 
together, and the religious emotion, being the strongest, 
does this most of all. Those who have laughed or 
cried together are no longer strangers. How much more 
powerful, then, than the superficial emotions of a chance 
and transitory feeling of mirth is the bond created by 
similar views of the world and of life, here and here- 
after, and above all, by a worship of the same God or 
Gods! Not only primitive man, but the cultivated 
believer of to-day, feels that here Is something more 
than a mere abstract philosophy. It has a practical sig- 
nificance, as securing the favour of supernatural powers. 
And if the godhead be an all-powerful conqueror and 
king, whose enmity is deadly, his good-will an un- 
equalled protection and security, one must feel it to be 
of the greatest importance that he should be universally 
worshipped, and regard oneself as personally endan- 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 233 

gered by anyone whose refusal to do honour to the na- 
tional divinity may bring down his rage upon the people 
as a whole. The self-righteousness natural to man, and 
his instinctive aversion to anything different from him- 
self, subversive of his habits, or opposed, in a manner 
that he feels to be provocative, to his mode of thought 
and feeling, afford sufficient explanation of the fanatical 
hatred of different beliefs — a hatred, however, that has 
more often caused the persecution of minorities at 
home than war abroad. 

No one who wished to gain ascendency or influence 
over mankind could overlook or neglect a feeling so 
universal, mighty, and deep-rooted as religion. There 
soon arose a class, differentiated from the multitude, 
which claimed to know more than they did of super- 
natural powers, to stand in a closer relation to them, 
and to possess a greater Influence over them. It as- 
sumed a monopoly of the highly advantageous position 
of go-between for the gifts that accompanied the sacri- 
fices and prayers of the faithful, and the favours 
accorded them In return by Gods, ghosts, and spirits. 
These mediators, who lived by faith, and claimed for 
themselves the possession of supernatural knowledge 
and power, formed either a class recruited from indi- 
viduals, like the Griots among the West African 
negroes, or the medicine-men among the North Ameri- 
can Indians, or a caste. This caste might be, like the 
Indian Brahmans, descended from conquerors, who had 
won by the sword the privileges they now tried to main- 
tain, without exertion or danger, by means of the 
prestige of terrifying legends; or like the Priests and 
Levites, when the Jews were an independent people, 



234 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

members of a more intellectual class, who knew how to 
assume the role of the favourites, confidants, and minis- 
ters of supernatural powers. 

This priestly parasitism was not always the cool and 
calculated deceit that it appears on a shallow interpreta- 
tion. Actions that are rooted in the subconscious mind 
of man, and extend back to its prehistoric and primitive 
past, are rarely entirely self-conscious. The latter-day 
priest, face to face with an old, often an immemorial 
institution, a Church on firm foundations, with dogmas 
and rites crystallized by long tradition, does not trouble 
himself about its origin, authenticity, or ultimate mean- 
ing. Possibly he believes the doctrines he has learnt and 
has to teach. To him the priesthood is a dignity, an 
office, like any other. It seems to him right and fitting 
that it should afford him a regular income and certain 
moral advantages. But his enjoyment is disturbed by 
no reflection, save perhaps for an occasional qualm as to 
whether he really gives believers a fair return for their 
money. Once a career Is regularly recognized by so- 
ciety and the State, people enter upon It without any 
higher consideration than that of personal advance- 
ment. They feel that they have done their duty if they 
fulfil the tasks prescribed, and attain the external 
positions to which it leads — preferments, dignities, and 
benefices, etc. So, It Is quite possible for a man to be 
a priest to-day, and yet a thoroughly honest, upright 
man. He may never call in question the character of 
his profession, or see that it is an exploitation of the ab- 
surd Ideas of mankind In general. It Is possible that 
the Roman augurs could not look at one another with- 
out laughing. Nevertheless, there must have been 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 235 

plenty of haruspices who conscientiously interpreted 
the liver of the sacrificial beast as they had learned to 
do from the templiim, whence the priesthood acquired 
their instruction in the significance of animal entrails. 
An astrologer who had drawn a perfectly regular horo- 
scope — no easy matter, but one involving considerable 
astronomical knowledge — ^was certainly on good terms 
with his conscience. 

The government could not afford to allow religion to 
be outside its control. The advantage, even the neces- 
sity, of establishing relations that would place it in the 
service of the State was soon perceived. It was easily 
done. Since men imagined God as a king, the king 
could play the God. The great Asiatic despots and the 
Egyptian kings assumed god-like honours; Caesarean 
Rome permitted altars to the ruler to be set up in the 
temples. When the ruler was not God Himself he was, 
like Alexander the Great, the Son of God, and of god- 
like descent, like the Japanese dynasty or the old Norse 
and pagan Germanic ruling houses, which claimed to 
spring from Thor or Odin ; or at least ordained by God, 
as is maintained to-day by all rulers by the grace of 
God. The State was created and is maintained by the 
power of the ruler and the fear of the ruled. The ruler 
soon saw how great an economy of strength would be 
involved if the fear aroused by his weapons could be 
strengthened by the fear of supernatural powers, and 
he tended this fear as carefully as the other. His war- 
riors and attendants were adorned with magnificent 
garments, decorations, and symbols, so that their as- 
pect might strike terror to the hearts of his subjects, 
and fill them with wonderment, respect, and fear. And 



236 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

the impression of his power was further heightened by 
the magic of supernatural descent and relationship. 
The crown became more impressive when surrounded 
by a halo. Faith became a pillar of the throne, and so 
long as the king assured the priest of his privileges, he 
was his trusty bodyguard. 

The subject learned in church the theoretical doctrine 
of obedience that was practically enforced by the armed 
agents of the royal will. The advantage for the ruler 
was so great that he maintained the Church as a public 
institution only second in importance to the army. Any 
attack upon the Church was regarded as an attack upon 
the ruler, who put at its disposal full powers of perse- 
cuting and exterminating critics, enemies, or recusants. 
The entire intellectual discipline of the people was 
handed over to the Church, whose doctrines were as- 
signed priority in the education of the young and the 
intellectual life of the people as a whole: and this 
although its unproved assumptions formed the sharpest 
possible contrast to all the rest of the teaching of the 
schools which the State endowed. "The faith of the 
people must be maintained," is merely another way of 
saying, " The submission of the people to their rulers, 
and their readiness to pay dues and taxes, must be main- 
tained." 

The ruler provided for the protection of his own 
interests by using the authority of the State directly and 
indirectly to secure that faith, piety, and resignation to 
God should be esteemed and inculcated in schools, from 
the pulpit, in literature and art, and stamped with gen- 
eral official recognition, and to impose a moral value for 
these qualities upon public opinion. No State in histori- 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 237 

cal times has ever anywhere failed to avail itself of the 
religious feeling and faith to strengthen and support 
its power. The first instance of separation of State 
and Church is that of the French Republic. There is 
no other example of such a thing. There have been 
States that recognized no official religion, and per- 
mitted their citizens the free exercise of any, but no- 
where in the past, or with the exception of France in 
the present, can a State be found which has expressly 
severed itself from the visionary ideas of faith, does not 
use it in its ordinances for the spread and maintenance 
of its power or the furtherance of its own ends, or 
assign it any value. The French innovation is a bold 
attempt to build the State on reason and power alone, 
in the belief that the citizens, seeing the necessity of 
State regulation, and rationally accepting force as the 
means for carrying it out, will obey the laws and accede 
to the demands of the State. The boldness of the at- 
tempt is its newness. As a matter of fact, with the ex- 
ception of the Jews, and perhaps of the Tibetans, the 
State, even when ruling with the help of faith, has 
never relied upon religion alone. It has never trusted to 
the fear of God to Induce the subject to pay his taxes, 
shed his blood, or obey his superiors. The Church has 
always had the canteen behind It, the priest the gen- 
darme to enforce his sermons with punishment, im- 
prisonment, and the gallows. The real difference 
between the worldly and the sacerdotal State is much 
less than the theoretical. But it is significant that one 
State should shake off an Immemorial and still con- 
venient fiction, should refuse to embellish practical 
violence by a theory of Divine ordinance, should 



238 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

decline a supernatural origin for purely utilitarian 
human arrangements, and refrain from uplifted eyes 
and unctuous tones when making demands of its sub- 
jects. 

As civilization advanced, the religious feeling, repre- 
senting as it does the instinct of self-preservation in its 
twofold aspect, the desire for knowledge and the fear of 
death, naturally produced various types of positive 
religion, from crude fetish worship to the refined hair- 
splitting of " enlightened " monotheism, as reduced to a 
philosophic system. It is superfluous to ask whether a 
phenomenon that seems an inevitable incident of de- 
velopment is useful.^ Nevertheless, since the age of 
enlightenment the question has often been raised 
whether religion Is useful to man, and answered as a 
rule in the affirmative, even by the emancipated. They 
credit religion, if not with creating civilization, at least 
with hastening its advance. They allow that it has 
developed man's moral nature, subdued his ferocity, 
taught him gentleness and love for his fellow-men, and 
comforted him in distress.^ These are very generous 
admissions. Not one of them can be regarded as 
proved. Civilization has not developed thanks to re- 
ligion, but in spite of it. Religion has not exercised a 

^ Voltaire (" Essai sur les Mceurs et I'Esprit des Nations," part ii., 
p. 205) answers the question in a decided negative: "Religion is the 
chief cause of all the sorrows of humanity. Everywhere useless, it 
has only served to drive men to evil, and plunge them in brutal mis- 
ery. ... It makes of history ... an immense tableau of human 
follies." 

2 J. J. Rousseau, " Emile," I., iv. : "[Christianity] has certainly 
made it [government] less blood-thirsty. This can be proved by 
comparing it with ancient [pre-Christian] governments." 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 239 

favourable Influence upon it, but it upon religion. 
There is an amazing want of logic in attributing the 
amelioration of manners to religion. As a matter of 
fact, this amelioration exercised a softening and human- 
izing effect upon religion, which was at first bloody and 
fearsome wherever it was found. 

The first harmful effect of religion was that it satis- 
fied man's desire for knowledge by means of a perfectly 
arbitrary Invention. The average man Is so constituted 
that any assertion confidently made and stubbornly 
maintained has an Immediate effect, and carries more 
complete conviction than a careful and sober proof to 
which he Is not able to give the sustained attention It 
requires. To man's Inquiry as to the cause of things, 
this reply was given by those who Invented the religious 
fable and its later professional exponents, the priests: 
" The world was created by the Gods, who can free 
you from suffering and death; your souls are Immortal," 
etc. ; and the timid questioners believed it, as children 
believe the answer their m'^ther gives them. In a tone 
of conviction, when they ask whence they came: " The 
stork brought ye." Man asks for the bread of knowl- 
edge ; religion gives him the stone of a fairy-tale, which, 
though Indigestible, fills the stomach, gives a false 
satiety, and arrests the wholesome hunger that Impelled 
them to seek salutary food. It was easier to give man a 
fictitious than a true answer to the questions about 
eternity that troubled him, but the effect was fatal, in 
so far as It led him to Imagine that he had the knowl- 
edge he sought, and so arrested his natural impulse to 
win, through effort and mistakes, a real Insight Into the 
connection of phenomena. It Is no reproach to religion 



240 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

that It invented fabulous explanations of the world. It 
arose inevitably at the stage when the mind of man was 
capable of the play of imagination, but incapable of 
serious observation, critical examination, or rational 
interpretation. At the same time, it cannot be said to 
have assisted his intellectual advance. It stereotyped 
a childish phase because of the practical interests 
bound up in it — the interests of the priesthood, of the 
government, of all those who profited by a public sys- 
tem in which the majority are induced to submit to 
exploitation with patience by the belief in a visionary 
hereafter that promises a choice between dazzling 
honours and recompenses or punishment and tortures. 
There have always been individuals who saw that re- 
ligion was a mere ^ction without the smallest kernel of 
truth. They could and should have taught the less 
instructed majority to see the senselessness of their 
faith. They might have hastened the process of prog- 
ress and anticipated the dawn of science by centuries. 
Religion closed their lips, and prevented them from 
rousing the many from their stupid dreams. Religion 
has employed every means for the destruction of its 
critics, from the poisoned cup forced on Socrates for 
trumped-up reasons of State, that were really reasons 
of religion, to the stake at which Giordano Bruno and 
Michael Servetus were burned. And yet it has been a 
factor in intellectual progress! Such an assertion is 
incomprehensible. 

The eulogists of religion gladly turn from the point 
of view of human development as a whole, in which 
they are not at home, to record its services in narrower 
fields. In Ireland and Germany it was the monks who 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 241 

cleared the primeval forests and turned up the soil with 
the plough; in France it was they who repeopled the 
wilderness after the migrations had swept over them. 
All over Western and Central Europe the monasteries 
were the first seats of peaceful labour and teaching set 
up in the wilderness. Down to modern times it has been 
the clergy who founded and maintained schools and 
cared for books. All this is true. But the medieval 
monks cultivated the soil for their own use, or to pro- 
vide themselves with satisfaction, power, and riches. 
Religion was their excuse, the claim upon which the 
possession of property was based; it had no more to do 
with their civilizing activities than with the productive 
settlements founded by the emigrants who cross the seas 
to-day. Thus, the schools founded by the Princes and 
Orders of the Church served (primarily) the purposes 
of the Church. Primarily trained a priesthood, and, in 
the second place, implanted in the minds of the youth 
of the ruling classes the views and opinions useful to 
the Church. In these schools the teaching of the formal 
elements — reading, writing, and grammar — and of the 
subjects that made up the trivium ^ and the quadrivium 
of the medieval curriculum, was used as a means of 
instilling the most irrational stories and dreams, and 
served, instead of wakening the intellect, to lull it to 
sleep. There is no doubt that men's minds would have 
been clearer and more intelligent, their desire for knowl- 
edge and their powers of discovery greater, had they 
then, instead of learning what was taught in the ecclesi- 
astical schools and by the ecclesiastical teachers, grown 

* The trivium included grammar, dialectic and rhetoric ; the 
quadrivium arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. 



242 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

up without any instruction at all, like the Redskins be- 
fore the whites settled in America. 

Religion is said to have subdued the ferocity of man, 
and taught him gentleness and the love of his fellow- 
creatures. This claim is as unfounded as that of ad- 
vancing education and civilization. That all primitive 
religions demanded human sacrifices can be established 
with practical certainty from the cultus rites surviving 
in historical times. At the exodus from Egypt the Jews 
were enjoined by their religion to destroy the whole 
population of Canaan root and branch, with their cattle, 
and their houses, and their goods. Islam bade the 
faithful wage the holy war on the races within their 
reach, and offer them a choice between conversion and 
slaughter. Without pity, often with the most appalling 
cruelty, did the Christians persecute the Arians, Albi- 
genses, Waldenses, and the other medieval heretics — 
Jews, and the Protestants of the Netherlands. When 
the French Huguenots got the upper hand, they did not 
fail to take a bloody retribution on the Catholics. 
What trace of the softening influence of religion is 
there in this long course of butchery and slaughter, ex- 
tending over thousands of years? 

It has provided a basis and sanction for morality — 
that is true. The religious teacher or believer has no 
difficulty in answering the question : " What is good, 
what evil? Why should I do good, and avoid evil? 
What will happen to me if I do evil, and neglect 
good?" He answers with unction: "Good is that 
which is commanded by God or the Gods, and pleasing 
to them; bad is what they hate and forbid. It is my 
part to make known the will of God or of the Gods. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 243 

Thou must do good in order to win the favour of the 
Gods, and avoid evil to escape their displeasure. If 
thou hast sinned, thou wilt be punished on earth or here- 
after; if thou art virtuous, the Gods will reward thee 
now and for evermore." The average man, with no 
strong passions, has no doubt often been governed by 
such phrases so long as he believed them. But with the 
awakening of his critical faculties he turned aside, with 
a shrug of the shoulders, from the childish promises of 
religious morality, and acted according to the dictates 
of his own habits, passions, or views; as, indeed, he had 
always done, even when he believed, in any case where 
his own inclinations and desires were stronger than the 
restraints inspired by the idea of the anger and threats 
of the Gods. Thus the moral effect of religion was. 
non-existent, not only, as is plain without proof, for the 
unbeliever, but even for the believer. Crimes were 
never more frequent or horrible than in those dark 
epochs of antiquity and the Middle Ages when men 
believed in the immediate vengeance of the Gods, as 
displayed in the cases of Niobe the Atreidae, in the 
Erinyes and in the eternal torments of Hell. Evil-doers 
thought nothing of selling their soul to the devil, or of 
securing God's indulgence by prayers and vows. Rob- 
bers and murderers to this day sometimes purchase 
candles and offerings before committing a crime, pray 
in church for its success, and give thanks for a lucky 
conclusion to the supernatural powers to which they 
imagine it to be due. 

As a matter of fact, what is really an effect is always 
spoken of as a cause. It was not religion that furthered 
education, softened manners, and gradually formed a 



244 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

moral sense in man, but education that endeavoured as 
It progressed to Introduce, In many cases with pain and 
difficulty, some degree of rationality Into the crude 
childishness of the rehgious legends. The softening of 
manners gradually removed the cruelty and lust of 
blood originally associated with religion. Man's moral 
aspirations affected his visionary faith, and Impressed 
on it something of their own character. 

Human development is determined by needs, giving 
rise to observation, and through it to knowledge. The 
influence of knowledge gradually moulded Intellectual 
life, and modified the most fixed and deeply-rooted 
habits. At the same time, as the direct outcome of 
needs, a form of adaptation Is going on alongside of 
this, but for the most part automatic and subconscious 
— the life of instinct. The lonely wanderer of primitive 
times was only attracted to his fellow-men by desire, 
and to a much less pronounced degree by the con- 
veniences of habit. Morality he neither needed nor 
possessed. But with society these needs arose. If he 
wished to live on tolerably peaceful terms with his 
neighbours, and avoid continual wrangles, violence, and 
danger of death, or at least of expulsion, he had to 
learn regard for others, and exercise self-control, even 
self-sacrifice, in order to make himself pleasing to them. 
This habit of considering the effect of any action on 
others was the empirical origin of what was later known 
as morality. It is therefore an immediate product of 
society, and the consequence, not of theoretical reflec- 
tion, but of adaptation to the conditions of a common 
existence. The Idea ever present in man's conscious- 
ness, "What will the others say to this? " became the 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 245 

voice of conscience, the inward reflection of public opin- 
ion. The relation between the inward monitor and the 
external surroundings that it interprets became gradu- 
ally obscured until conscience, separated from the dim 
social conception in which it arose, appears finally as a 
normal constituent of personality. 

The most characteristic function of the conscience is 
to check. Its action is negative ; it arrests the impulses. 
" Do it not ! " it cries, and in an undertone, often in- 
audible: " Society would be against you! " Conscience 
acts positively with a small minority of people of lively 
imagination and delicate sensibilities; with them it in- 
cites as well as checking, commands as well as forbid- 
ding. Instead of only saying "Do it not! " it says, 
" Do it I " It grows out of a mere fear of wounding 
our companions into an active desire to win them over, 
and fill them with joy, love, and wonder. Cold, cautious 
consideration for others becomes a warm and active 
love, an altruism whose psychic root is the capacity to 
imagine the sufferings of another, and suffer personally 
from a vivid picture of distress. Altruism, therefore, 
is protection against actual pain; conscientiousness the 
idea of possible discomfort, and a protection against 
potential pain. Only in the few does the development 
of morality thus proceed from the negative to the posi- 
tive stage. In most it is negative at best; in many it is 
distorted or entirely wanting. Persons suffering from 
hypertrophy of the ego, or a sense of power which is 
developed to excess, have no consideration for others. 
They consider themselves so vastly superior that the 
hate or enmity of others is a matter of indifference. On 
persons of violent impulses and weak mentality the 



246 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

idea that they will rouse others against them has abso- 
lutely no effect in restraining them from actions that 
must bring them into collision. Such men commit 
crimes from violence or weakness. But whether you 
take the criminal, the man who keeps on the right side 
of every social usage, or the warm-hearted altruist, the 
things he does and the things he leaves undone are the 
outcome of a perpetual balancing of psychic states, of 
checks against impulses, a series of duels between or- 
ganic instincts and the idea of society. Convenient 
labour-saving formulae have been invented for this idea. 
Regard for neighbours is expressed in the ten tables of 
Moses, in the Commandments of Manu, later, in the 
legal codes. A Divine origin has been assigned to the 
most ancient formulae, as to everything remote and im- 
memorial in origin, whether it be an invention or, a form 
of social institution. Morality, which arose out of 
society, was referred to the commandment of God. 
To men's superstitious minds, the fact that their actions 
were seen by their neighbours suggested that they were 
watched over by supernatural powers. 

It is possible, but not certain, that moral checks may 
have been strengthened by the absorption of mystical 
ideas, and the wholesome fear of the gendarme by a 
belief in its supernatural origin. Certain, however, it 
is not. The state of morality in the times when faith 
was most fervent and superstition most rampant makes 
it very doubtful. Anyhow, morality neither needs nor 
is strengthened by a religious basis. It remains the 
same when stripped of all supersensual attributes. It 
arose from the necessities of that social life of which it 
is the condition, and it will last so long as men live in 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 247 

societies. Faith will never restrain criminal natures 
from ill-doing; society has always had to protect itself 
against them by force, and will always have to do so, 
whether they believe or no. What is done and what is 
left undone by the average man of negative morality is 
determined, quite apart from the question of his belief 
or unbelief, by considerations of public opinion, law, 
and custom. And the positive morality of the altruistic 
minority springs from pity, from a heightened sensi- 
bility, not from the dogmatic precepts that must be, for 
them, even were their own organization different from 
what it is, but a dead letter. Religion has never had 
any influence on the origin and development of morals 
any more than on their active exercise. It has never 
done anything more than incorporate in its system the 
principles arrived at by morality through the operation 
of the forces that brought it into being, and strengthen 
that system by expressing these principles in the form 
of dogmas. 

Religion no doubt has brought comfort to many. 
That this is so is not, however, at all to its credit. The 
practical utility of untruth is a cynical defence that all 
liars bring forward. No doubt the assurance of im- 
mortality robs the idea of death of its terrors. The 
promise of future reunion helps the mother to bear the 
loss of her child; the thought that eternal justice will be 
dealt out to good and evil deeds pours balsam in the 
wounds of the weak, down-trodden, and ill-used who 
have succumbed before the pride of the mighty. But 
the means by which these tortured spirits are soothed 
are unhealthy and immoral in the extreme — ^invented 
tales and arbitrary assertions which cannot stand a 



248 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

moment's critical examination. The merit that belongs 
to the consolation of religion must be granted to every 
superstition — the amulet that averts the evil eye, spells, 
the interpretation of cards and dreams, the raising of 
spirits. All this hocus-pocus has lightened dark hours 
for millions who believed in it, given them confidence 
and self-reliance, lifted heavy burdens from their souls, 
and reconciled them to the hardness of their lot. More- 
over, physical sedatives, like opium, morphia, and 
alcohol, must be assigned an equal value with religion. 
They, too, console; they, too, bring temporary oblivion 
of care and suffering; they, too, give an artificial sense 
of pleasure. And if It be at the price of health, the 
same holds true of religion when It takes the form of 
mortification of the flesh and self-inflicted tortures. 
The ancients, recognizing this, regarded intoxication as 
a blessing for which they rendered peculiar thanks to 
the Gods.^ 

Not one of the services that religion claims to have 
rendered to man can be substantiated. It has retarded, 
not advanced, civilization. It has injured knowledge. 
It has had no share In the softening of manners. It 
did not create morality; it has appropriated without 
elevating It. Its powers of consolation are confined to 
individuals in whom the sense of actuality Is deadened or 

' Frederic de Rougemont, " Les deux cites: la philosophic de I'histoire 
aux differents ages de Thumanite," Paris, 1878, vol. i., p. 187: 
" Dionysius comforts mortals in all their sorrows. The son of 
Semele puts an end to the profound misery of humanity (Penthos) by 
giving men knowledge of his vine. There was a time when the 
Greeks believed that God himself had given them wine that they 
might forget their pain. They looked upon intoxication as a sacred, 
divine ecstasy." 



PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RELIGION 249 

undeveloped. Everywhere it is but an epiphenomenon 
of that universal development upon which it has had 
either no effect or a detrimental one. Development 
goes on as the outcome of increasing knowledge and 
more delicate adaptation to the conditions imposed 
upon human existence by nature and society, and re- 
ligion, with its ideas, dogmas, systems, and cults, fol- 
lows in its train. Religion never voluntarily changes its 
doctrines. It only does so when those who believe 
threaten to desert it, because it is plainly contradicted 
by common knowledge. Thus religion, despite its re- 
sistance, is slowly driven on by the general course of 
intellectual development, which it in vain endeavours 
to arrest. 

Since man became capable of abstract thought he has 
been tormented by the riddle of eternity. He has 
always found the thought of death, the complete de- 
struction of his personality, intolerable. He has always 
been crushed by the feeling of his nothingness in the 
midst of the vastness of the universe, his helplessness in 
face of the powers of nature, which go on their way 
without regarding him or troubling about him at all. 
The invention of religion was the simplest and least 
troublesome way of providing an answer to the ques- 
tions that tortured him, protection against death, a less 
humiliating position in the universe, a support against 
the cruelty of nature, a link with Its terrifying powers. 
The need which gave birth to religion still exists, and 
will exist, in all probability, as long as men think and 
feel. But it cannot always be satisfied with fables and 
visions. So much Is certain, however difficult it be as 
yet to form any clear idea of any other means by which 



250 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

the growing Intelligence of average humanity, the scales 
once fallen from Its eyes, can satisfy the Instinct of self- 
preservation in its twofold aspect — the desire for knowl- 
edge and the fear of death. An attempt to do so will, 
however, be made In a following chapter. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES OF HISTORY 

Popular charts of the sky, that combine bodies im- 
measurably distant and entirely unconnected with each 
other in a single star, under a single name, may be 
picturesque; they do not advance the knowledge of the 
universe or of the laws of astronomy. In the same way 
the spectacle of human existence on the earth is not 
illuminated by projecting into it an arbitrary system of 
phantoms, and persuading oneself that they represent 
the life of the species, not the reflection of one's own 
imagination. The dreams of a deductive philosophy of 
history do not forward our knowledge of events by one 
hair's-breadth. To forget that the words used, 
" humanity," " society," " nation," are but convenient 
ways of expressing abstract conceptions and vague 
generalizations of a comprehensive kind, is to get out 
of touch with reality, and prevent oneself from seeing 
or comprehending it, because to do thus is to set up 
between it and oneself an anthropomorphic image of 
one's own creation — a man of straw. The only reality 
is the individual who lives, acts, and suffers. In him 
alone the events of history have an existence, even the 
mass movements in which a bird's-eye view cannot 
distinguish individual action or bearing. He plays 
all the parts in the drama of history, from the hero to 
the walking gentleman. An accurate idea of the inner 

251 



252 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

structure of the historical life of mankind as a whole 
can only be obtained by a study of individual charac- 
teristics, of thought and reactions^ — in a word, of 
individual biology and psychology.^ Medicine could 
really know nothing of sickness as long as the abstract 
concept, sickness — in which a mass of concrete phenom- 
ena and conscious states was included — v/as regarded 
as a material thing, although it might conceal Its 
ignorance by juggling with all sorts of portentous and 
unmeaning words like " genius morbi," " dyscrasia," 
etc. Real insight was first acquired when the cell, the 
primary constituent of the organism, was recognized as 
the seat of the life-process, and its normal course and 
deviations from that norm studied there. Individual 
psychology is to history what the pathology of the cell 
Is to medicine. Even this Is an excessive concession to 
the analogic habit of thought; the independence of the 
Individual within the people and within humanity Is 
far greater than of the cell within the organism. 
Goethe's phrase expresses the right method: 

" Wouldst draw strength from the whole? 
See in smallest part the perfect soul." 

All Individual members of the species have certain 
fundamental characteristics. Feeling, thought, will, and 

* Paul Lacombe, " De I'histoire consideree comme science," Paris, 
1894, P- 52: "The primitive causes of history are the persistent mo- 
tives of man and the permanent habits of his mind." Joh. Fr. Her- 
bart, "Collected Works" (edited by G. Hartenstein), passim (vol. 
v., pp. 160 et seq.; vol. viii., pp. loi et seq., etc.), shows that the 
analysis of the life of the individual soul is the basis of historical 
science. Cousin says concisely: "The science of history is really 
psychological." Fontana and Ferguson, among others, are of the same 
opinion. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 253 

action proceed in the same manner in almost all indi- 
viduals — up to a certain point in all without exception. 
This facilitates the study of human psychology by 
simplifying its objects, but does not remove the necessity 
of studying them in the individual. He may be selected 
at will from the crowd, but he must be a concrete in- 
dividual, not an abstraction. Positive results acquired 
from a particular living being may be cautiously general- 
ized, without any great danger of their being inappli- 
cable to the species as a whole. On the other hand, if 
the attention be diverted from the individual, and cast 
down from some remote height upon the seething mass 
in which personal physiognomies are no longer dis- 
tinguishable, the only portrait of an individual that 
could be drawn from such an impressionist view, if I 
may put it so, would be a fancy composition based on 
preconceived ideas — an ideal being that might represent 
a wish, but would certainly not correspond to any human 
being of flesh and blood. It is obvious that the his- 
torian's humanity, composed of such beings, must be 
wholly unreal. 

Man shares with all other living things the instinct 
of self-preservation. This makes it necessary and pos- 
sible for him to adapt himself, actively or passively, to 
given conditions of existence — passively by organic re- 
sistance to injurious circumstances, actively by trying to 
escape from them or to alter them and render them 
favourable. Passive adaptation came first. It is a 
chemical and mechanical process. It is the work of the 
vegetative organs. If they refuse, the individual 
perishes. Every Individual that survives proves, by 
his very existence, that he has been able to maintain 



254 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

himself against all the forces incessantly at work for his 
destruction. He is heir to all the capacities, forms, 
and inward arrangements acquired by a series of an- 
cestors in the truceless struggle for existence. Proof 
of the magnitude of the organic effort involved even 
in passive adaptation, and of the profound changes 
in the organism that it can produce, is afforded by the 
waxen covering of the acid-proof bacilli; the arrange- 
ments possessed by Alpine plants to protect them against 
cold and want of water, by desert plants against 
drought; the way in which fish, whose watery home is 
hable to be periodically dried up, breathe alternatively 
through lungs or gills; and the hibernation of those 
warm-blooded animals who have regularly to go for 
months without food. This great work, productive of 
the most decisive consequences, was proceeding through- 
out the organs and tissues of the living body before the 
smallest ray of common consciousness arose. After 
the development of that consciousness it ceased, and 
plays no further part. 

Active adaptation appeared much later than passive. 
Instead of being a purely biochemical, biomechanical 
function, the independent response of cells, tissues, 
organs to external stimuli, it is a unified co-operation of 
all the organs and the whole system in carrying out a 
plan developed in the consciousness, and present to it as 
an idea, before it can be translated into act by nerves 
and muscles. This higher, more developed, and In- 
direct form of adaptation premises the existence of con- 
sciousness, able, by means of its fundamental attribute, 
memory, to work out Ideas, to arrange them In order, 
to associate them with other subconscious Ideas re- 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 255 

sembling or related to them in space and time, or as 
belonging to the same object, and to draw conclusions 
and form judgments from them. A description of 
psychology would be out of place here. It must suffice 
to recall its main points. 

Consciousness is the first fact of psychology. It is a 
datum that cannot be explained. It perceives the im- 
pressions conveyed to it by the sensory nerves. From 
these perceptions it composes an image of the causes of 
these impressions of the sensory nerves, as far as they 
are known by experience and constant examination or 
can be guessed from analogy, and this image is an idea. 

By the juxtaposition and combination of ideas the 
consciousness acquires a view of the conditions or events 
of the external world, whether present, past, or future. 
This view is a judgment. The exactitude with which 
the ideas of which the judgment is composed correspond 
to the perceptions, and the delicacy with which the per- 
ceptions repeat the sense impressions, determines the 
accuracy of the judgment, the degree of definiteness and 
truth with which it reflects an actual or potential reality 
— a condition or process that is, was, or under certain 
hypotheses could be. 

When the judgment includes ideas that personally 
affect the judge, in which he is himself actively or 
passively concerned, these ideas arouse more or less 
powerful feelings, and set up certain muscular move- 
ments, or at least, foreshadow them, that is to say, 
they rouse the activity of the will. Will is a short and 
conveniently simple description of a very complicated 
psychic process, whose main features are as follows : 
Some external sense stimulus — a perception of some 



256 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

kind, or an inner organic need — hunger, thirst, desire, 
fatigue, or discomfort — calls ideas into consciousness. 
If the idea stands alone, or is from the first of such 
intensity that no others can form themselves beside it, 
it excites the motor centres, the muscles become active, 
and the organism carries out an act which, under the 
given conditions, corresponds to the stimulus or satisfies 
the need — that is, a serviceable act. Muscular activity 
when accompanied by no idea is reflex. If, on the 
contrary, consciousness has previous knowledge of the 
muscular act, forms an image of it and of its purpose 
before it is realized, it feels it to be volitional — an act 
of will. But in most cases the idea either does not 
stand alone, or does not prevail immediately on Its 
appearance. Several ideas present themselves at once, 
and each tries to crowd out and suppress the other, to 
occupy consciousness and initiate muscular movement 
by itself. In the contest victory rests with the idea 
supported by the strongest organic impulses, desires, and 
inclinations, by the expectation of the most alluring 
pleasure and the apprehension of the most dreaded 
pains. It drives the others from the field, excites the 
motor centres, and causes appropriate actions. In such 
a case the consciousness is sensible of a psychic effort, 
a contest of will, and a victory of will over resistance. 
Will Is then. In the last resort, the liberation of co- 
ordinated, purposive, muscular movements by the in- 
fluence of an Idea, or the prevention of such an influence 
by means of an opposing Idea, which suppresses it — 
that Is, by an inhibition or check. 

One condition of the regular operation of the con- 
sciousness Is attention — ^that is, such an adjustment of 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 257 

the psychic apparatus that all the sense impressions 
perceived, and all the ideas brought up from the sub- 
consciousness, serve the one end of giving the greatest 
possible intensity to the particular complex of ideas at 
that moment dominating the consciousness, and secure 
the duration of that complex by ignoring — that is, pas- 
sively resisting — all foreign conceptions, Ideas, and recol- 
lections. But for attention consciousness would be 
given up to inconsequence and reverie; ideas would 
never be interpreted into clear, sharply-outlined images, 
and could not maintain themselves or issue in systematic 
movements — that is, in acts of will. 

Attention may be natural or artificial. It is natural 
when the psychic apparatus is adjusted in Immediate 
response to some organic impulse. Under the Impulse 
of its desire for prey the cat watches the mouse-hole. 
All its senses are concentrated on its purpose. When 
it sees the unsuspecting mouse venturing forth. It Is 
blind to all else. Attention Is artificial when the psychic 
apparatus Is not adjusted to an Immediate organic need, 
but to an Idea of some satisfaction desired or pain to 
be avoided, of other than a directly organic kind. In 
spite of his repugnance, the schoolboy forces himself 
to learn grammatical rules by heart, and suppresses the 
Ideas of pleasant loafing, because the Idea of the un- 
pleasantness of failing In his examination so regulates 
his psychic adjustment that, for the moment, the gram- 
matical rules have sole possession of his consciousness. 
The man of science, whose gaze Is riveted on his micro- 
scope and the images which It reveals, has his senses 
and his consciousness preserved from distraction from 
the object of his observation directly through his sclen- 



258 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

tific curiosity, and Indirectly through the idea of the 
pleasure of acquiring new knowledge. 

A diseased form of attention is mono-ideism, when 
the consciousness is permanently possessed by one ex- 
clusive idea, which all perceptions and associations only 
serve to feed and strengthen. When other ideas suc- 
ceed in entering the consciousness, without driving this 
central idea out, so that the consciousness is perceiving 
sense impressions, turning them into ideas, then form- 
ing judgments, and so acts of will, while all the time 
the original idea remains like a foreign body, unmoved 
in the midst of the burning tide of Ideas that stream 
continually through the consciousness, the state is de- 
scribed as obsession. But If the attention of the con- 
sciousness, instead of being open to perceptions conveyed 
to it by the sensory nerves. Is claimed by inner organic 
processes accompanied by sensations of intense pleasure, 
then the consciousness becomes inaccessible to impres- 
sions from the outer world, all Its ideas are referred 
only to sensations of pleasure, and It falls into a state 
known as ecstasy. 

When the attention is thoroughly aroused, the con- 
sciousness recognizes the ideas that have by experience 
been proved to be Incompatible, and avoids uniting 
ideas that are mutually exclusive to form one judgment. 
It is sensible of the absurdity of the judgment, " Angels 
are beings consisting of winged human heads," because 
it knows from experience that, since the human head has 
a mouth connected with a windpipe and digestive canal, 
a mouth without this canal leading to lungs and stomach 
has neither meaning nor purpose, while no head could 
live without breath, circulation, or nourishment. When 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 259 

attention flags, and permits vague ideas to appear in 
the consciousness, judgments may arise composed of 
mutually exclusive parts, and therefore absurd — op- 
posed, that is, to the truth as known to human ex- 
perience. The same result is brought about, even 
though the attention does not flag, when the conscious- 
ness unites in one judgment, and places in one category, 
ideas that have been acquired by personal experience 
and ideas that, having been taken over ready-made 
from the consciousness of others, have not been acquired 
by experience or controlled by the senses, and are, as a 
matter of fact, false. 

The means by which ideas are conveyed ready-made 
from one consciousness to another is language. Unless 
the ideas combine parts that have been proved by ex- 
perience to be mutually exclusive, their absurdity will 
not appear. Language can transmit false ones as read- 
ily as true without, indeed, perceiving any difference 
between them, unless each individual idea thus trans- 
mitted be tested by the senses and then by experience. 
This is in many cases almost, if not wholly, impossible 
— for example, in the case of assertions about events 
that happened at some remote time or place. Lan- 
guage is, therefore, with laxity of attention, the source 
of false conclusions. Moreover, the majority of men 
never do translate spoken or written images into ideas. 
They remain in the consciousness mere sounds or signs, 
which are either repeated or reproduced from time to 
time, after the fashion of parrots or monkeys, without 
any interpretation at all, or else interpreted in a manner 
that removes them more or less from the ideas which 
they must originally have symbolized. Thus, men who 



26o THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

wish to pass as learned, and even as sensible — it is 
not necessarily the same thing — have solemnly deliv- 
ered themselves, as if they were uttering some pro- 
fundity, of such nonsense as Hegel's, " The Roman 
Empire is finitude raised to infinitude," or his, " The 
sun is the thesis, the satellite and comet the antithesis, 
the planet the synthesis " ; or the description by the 
mystical Father Boscowitch ^ of " the material point 
that possesses mass without extension." The spoken 
and the written word, which should transmit ideas, 
produce as a rule nothing but psittacism and pitheclsm. 
There is one activity of the consciousness in which 
ideas exist side by side in the order In which they are 
called up by association from the subconsciousness, and 
are combined in judgments even when obviously mutu- 
ally exclusive. This occurs In dreams, which unite 
ideas In accordance with their associations in time and 
space and their emotional resemblances, without any 
sense of the unreality and absurdity of the Images and 
judgments thus formed. Fantasy, though a waking 
state, summons up and combines Ideas by the same un- 
restrained method of mechanical association found in 
dreams. These ideas, being ultimately recollections — 
reflections, therefore, of some real experience — are com- 
bined In a manner that Is wholly unreal. The difference 
between dream and fantasy Is that In the dream one 
single bodily feeling or one emotion that dominates 
the organism calls the Ideas forth and combines them, 
whereas fantasy Is not determined by physical feelings — 
except In the case of the sick, where they cause delirium 

* Quoted by J. Paul Milliet, " La Dynamics et les trois ames," Paris, 
1908, p. z. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 261 

— but by organic emotion combined with conscious 
thought, that excludes any glaringly contradictory 
ideas, and forms unreal judgments for the sake of their 
charm, while perfectly aware of their unreality. 

All processes of the brain and nervous system can be 
quicker and slower, fainter or more powerful. These 
differences of rhythm and Intensity determine the differ- 
ences of individual temperament. The contest between 
ideas in the consciousness that ends in the subjugation 
of the one and decided mastery of the other may go on 
with more or less energy. The greater the energy with 
which ideas appear and assert themselves and drive 
other aggressive ideas out, the keener and more sus- 
tained is the attention, the firmer is the will. The 
energy with which ideas struggle for existence in the 
consciousness is the measure of character. Character 
and temperament are inborn characteristics, like stature, 
or the colour of eyes, hair, and skin. They may pos- 
sibly be increased by practice; they can certainly be 
weakened and even destroyed by artificial means, by 
alcoholic and other poisons, and deficient resistance to 
the desire for pleasure. 

All effort of brain and nerves, from the first phase to 
the last, from differentiation of sense impressions, per- 
ception, idea, judgment, down to the act of will, has one 
single purpose — the adaptation of the organism to its 
environment, the knowledge and utilization for its own 
advantage of the conditions under which it has to main- 
tain its existence. Its protection and defence against the 
harms and dangers threatening it. The necessities of 
self-preservation have caused the differentiation of the 
general sensibility of the body into various senses, and 



262 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

the rise and development of specific sense organs. They 
have fused the exceedingly limited consciousness prob- 
ably inherent in every cell, every molecule of living mat- 
ter, into a common organic consciousness, and then 
developed and refined this consciousness, enriched it 
by the power of associating ideas, taught it attention, 
and developed an inhibitory system, which can insure 
the permanence of any conscious state, defend it against 
distraction, suppress reflex action, and co-ordinate voli- 
tions. 

The more distinct and numerous the sense impres- 
sions ; the clearer the ideas and the fuller their reflection 
in the consciousness of the states and modifications of 
the external world; the more numerous and accurate the 
recollections that they summon from the subconscious- 
ness; the more readily association completes the imme- 
diate perceptions and interprets to the consciousness the 
order, succession, and connection of external phenom- 
ena, even where they are not wholly concrete; the 
greater proportionate measure of reality contained by 
judgments, and the acts of will, that result from the 
influence of the judgment on the inhibitions and motor 
impulses, the closer the correspondence with the interest 
of the organism whether momentary or permanent, 
and the better in proportion are its prospects of mai-n- 
taining itself successfully In the struggle for existence. 
In a word, attention, knowledge, will, are all alike 
forms of the struggle for existence. Every reaction, 
conscious or unconscious, of the organism to the phe- 
nomenal world is a form of adaptation, and the driving 
and creative force behind the efforts and the develop- 
ment of mind is the instinct of self-preservation. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 263 

Men are by nature unequal, as even Rousseau ^ ad- 
mits, although with singular logic he deduces from their 
natural inequality the possibility — nay, the necessity — 
of moral and political equality. Men are unequal in 
stature, skull formation, and colour; they are no less 
unequal in temperament and character. The proximate 
causes of this inequality are mainly heredity, by which 
the type is determined, and to a lesser degree unfavour- 
able circumstances, which cause a morbid failure to 
attain the full development of the type. The inequality 
resulting from unfavourable circumstances can be easily 
removed by an amelioration in these conditions. The 
extent to which inequality resulting from heredity can 
be influenced is as yet unknown; unknown, too, are the 
remote causes of the appearance of different human 
types. We do not know whether they represent sports 
of a species originally single, or are the results of 
originally different, although closely related, prehuman 
animal species; whether they can be modified and grad- 
ually transformed into one another by external influ- 
ences, or remain fixed so long as they are bred in, and 
change only when breeds are crossed. One thing Is 
certain. As men are tall and short, dolicho- and 
brachycephalic, strong and weak in muscular, so there 
are men who think slowly and men who think rapidly; 

* J. J. Rousseau, " Discours sur I'origine et les fondements de 
I'inegalite parmi les hommes " : "I conceive . . . two kinds of in- 
equality: one which I call natural or physical, because it is estab- 
lished by nature, and consists in the difference of age, health, bodily 
strength, and mental and spiritual qualities; another, which may be 
called moral or political inequality, because it depends upon a sort 
of convention, and has been established, or at least authorized, by 
the consent of men." ' 



264 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

men In whom attention is fugitive, and men In whom 
it is sustained; men whose character is vacillating, and 
men who are firm; men in whom will Is slack, and men 
In whom it is powerful. These characteristics are in- 
dubitably the expression of the chemical composition 
of the living protoplasm of the cell, which varies be- 
tween man and man, species and species. 

Observation establishes the existence in man of cer- 
tain quahtles which, in their main outlines, apart from 
minor details, are reproduced with sufficient frequency 
to allow a line to be drawn marking the average level 
of development, above which only a small minority rise 
at all, and only exceptional cases by any considerable 
extent. Let us select from the crowd any individual 
at random, a man who is in no sense outstanding, neither 
above nor beneath the normal level, and examine him 
as we should an average specimen of any other species 
of which we wished to form an Idea. This man, whom 
I should like, in spite of the Ill-repute into which the 
word has fallen through Incautious use, to call normal, 
is in temperament and character the outcome of natural 
and inherited tendencies. The content of his conscious- 
ness Is largely the product of education, of which the 
aims and methods have been determined by society and 
the State. Primitive man's whole knowledge of the 
world must have rested on his own perception and 
observation, however limited that may have been: It 
was based upon personal experience, went back to actual 
Impressions, and was transformed by him to an inner 
vision. In a state of civilization the normal man owes 
the smallest part of his ideas and judgments to the Im- 
pressions made by his own senses, and the mode in 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 265 

which they are developed by his own thought. For 
the greater part they come to him, as written and spoken 
symbols through the writing and speech of others, and 
remain throughout his life mere sounds and signs, that 
are either associated with no view at all, or with one 
quite at variance with reality. A stream of words and 
combinations pours in upon him from language, inter- 
course, school, newspapers, and books, and some of 
them remain in his memory as formulae. If he is pro- 
vided with a good supply of such formulae, and can 
produce one on any occasion that requires it, he passes 
in his own estimation and that of his fellows as a cul- 
tivated man. But his repetition of formulae is mere 
psittacism, and his word-knowledge has nothing to do 
with real knowledge. His consciousness contains a tiny 
kernel of experience shrouded as often as not in a vast 
fog of words. 

Observation sharpens the sense of reality, and accus- 
toms the consciousness to examine its ideas and criticize 
the elements of perception of which they are composed. 
It at once perceives the incompatibility between ideas 
combined in a judgment, and dismisses as absurd one 
composed of incompatible or mutually exclusive ideas. 

But, on the contrary, when the consciousness, instead 
of forming judgments from its own sense perceptions, 
accepts them ready-made in verbal form from other 
men, there is nothing to warn it of their meaningless- 
ness. Words can be joined together to form a sen- 
tence, even if they express the impossible, and unless 
the written or spoken symbol is translated into an idea, 
the impossibility escapes the consciousness. Now, the 
ordinary man seldom translates his words into ideas, 



266 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

or only very partially. One repeats a judgment from 
another, parrot-wise, a judgment to which no thought 
is attached. He becomes so much accustomed to using 
abstractions, whose content at the best is casual and 
arbitrary, that his consciousness ceases to mirror the 
actual world at all. The normal man neither observes 
nor examines. He repeats mechanically what he has 
heard said. He is not critical: he is credulous. 

The capacity for attention is, as a rule, weakly de- 
veloped. Even the natural attention, aroused and main- 
tained by some immediate organic interest, some im- 
pulse, desire, or passion, soon wearies, and the artificial 
attention that lacks any such stimulus is still earlier 
exhausted. Consciousness in the normal man is a mere 
corridor, through which streams a rapid tide of ideas, 
seldom pausing to place themselves so that they stand 
out distinctly, maintain their hold, or calls up across 
the threshold of consciousness the recollections whose 
association might complete them. The result of in- 
sufficient attention is that the immediate perceptions 
remain isolated and fragmentary. Mere word-images, 
that need have no real content at all, become combined 
with sense perceptions to form ideas. False judgments 
are thus formed, which are compelled by the poverty 
and incompleteness of their associations to confine them- 
selves to what is immediately given, without being able 
to trace its proximate and ultimate causes or its imme- 
diate and remote effects. Thus, the normal man can 
see no further into the connection of phenomena than 
their concrete and temporal aspect, while he is unable 
to anticipate the future, even in so far as it is conditioned 
by the present. His knowledge is strictly limited. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 267 

His petty and distorted picture of the world Is almost 
entirely out of touch with reality, because it is composed 
to a very small extent of perceptions, and to a much 
larger one of word-images, fantastically interpreted, 
and of the products of a roving imagination. His 
adaptation, for which consciousness exists, Is extremely 
defective. It leaves him defenceless against dangers 
which he does not notice or whose cause he cannot un- 
derstand, poor in the face of uncomprehended possi- 
bilities which might enrich his life could he but grasp 
them. 

Consciousness strives, after the measure of its capac- 
ity, to lighten the heavy task of adaptation. The 
method at its disposal is habit. Recurring perceptions, 
however casually or Incompletely repeated, will start the 
whole train of mental operations which was initiated 
when they were first attentively and completely observed. 
Without any fresh effort of thought or will, they 
provoke the corresponding ideas, judgments, and acts. 
All these activities are so organized in the brain that 
one calls up the other, and the organism responds, 
without fatigue, uncertainty, or hesitation, to the exist- 
ing stimulus with the appropriate reaction. When the 
habitual responses of consciousness to impression are 
fully organized, the behaviour of the individual be- 
comes instinctive, and his actions automatic. They do 
not, Indeed, take place entirely without activity on the 
part of the consciousness, but it is wholly freed from 
anything painful In the effort of thought, judgment, 
or will. 

It has been established by European observers that 
negro children possess a lively comprehension and quick 



268 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

intelligence, and do not, when at school, fall behind 
whites of the same age. This apparent equahty of 
endowment lasts up to a certain age, generally contem- 
poraneous with puberty. Then a sort of numbness 
supervenes. The little blacks can no longer follow the 
instruction. They become incapable of receiving new 
ideas, and fail, even if they have the will and make 
the effort, to rise above the stage at which they have 
arrived. This phenomenon has only been found 
among negroes, because it has only been looked for 
there. Its application is, however, not confined to the 
black race, but extends to the whole human species, 
without distinction of colour. The intellectual devel- 
opment of the average man is not co-extensive with his 
life. It soon ceases, and as a rule, as in the case of 
negro children, with sexual adolescence. 

Youthful man is liberally endowed with thirst for 
knowledge or curiosity. New impressions give him 
pleasure, and he seeks for them. He readily responds 
to stimuli, assimilates thoughts, is seldom obstinately 
fixed in his ideas, soon makes himself at home wherever 
he may be, and cleverly accommodates himself to 
change. However, even at this stage of youthful plia- 
bility he finds it more agreeable, because less trouble- 
some, to imitate foreign copies than to invent rules 
for himself, to repeat what he has been told than to 
win personal knowledge by experience. But imitation 
comes easily and readily to him. As he grows older 
the moment comes, earlier to some, later to others, when 
the mind loses Its easy pliability, and the consciousness, 
so to speak, congeals to some extent. The desire for 
knowledge gives place to dulness. Man avoids any 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 269 

new experiences that penetrate below the surface. His 
observation becomes cursory and superficial. He dis- 
regards everything unusual; he neither notices nor heeds 
it unless it is painfully forced upon his attention. He 
is set against new methods of thought; he dislikes a 
strange circle in which he has to watch the lie of the 
land and find his own way about. He is only happy 
when following the well-worn path of every day, along 
which he could go in his sleep, or with his eyes shut, 
so well does he know it and the goal to which it leads. 
He cannot be brought to change his mind. He sticks 
to his ideas, even when they have been proved to be 
errors. He struggles even against imitation, if the 
copy be new. He will only repeat himself. He adapts 
himself to changed conditions of life slowly and In- 
completely, if at all. He is aware that his organization 
is no longer equal to the task of dissolving the stereo- 
typed combinations In his brain and forming new asso- 
ciations, and enters upon it very timidly. The normal 
man's hatred for anything new, what Lombroso calls 
his misoneism, Is a protective Instinct, based upon bio- 
logical reasons. It is a form of a protection against 
harm. The man whose brain Is petrified is right In 
dreading anything new. It makes demands which he 
could not meet. He prefers the often Incredible misery 
or even acute suffering to which he Is accustomed to 
the effort involved In freeing himself from a habit and 
building up the new disposition that promises to relieve 
or rid him of his pain. 

Such is the normal man. His will Is of moderate 
force and endurance, and therefore his attention Is soon 
fatigued, and cannot remain long at Its full on one point. 



270 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

His perceptions in consequence are superficial and 
fragmentary. He completes them arbitrarily by the 
addition of recollections, more or less suitable, and 
ideas, more or less analogous. The content of his con- 
sciousness is meagre, and includes a little reality, a good 
deal of illusion, and a number of purely verbal symbols 
that possess for him no real meaning. His thought 
is not energetic enough to carry to its logical conclusion, 
its appropriate judgment, knowledge, or action any train 
of ideas that is of importance to him at a given moment, 
or assure it, when so employed, the sole possession of 
consciousness by keeping away the perpetual stream of 
ideas aroused by changing sense impressions, bodily sen- 
sations, and accidental associations. Rather he prefers 
to saunter along the easy path of semi-conscious reverie, 
that needs no concentration and attention, no effort of 
any kind, and leads to no clearness of view, no knowl- 
edge, no serviceable expression of will. He cannot 
comprehend the connection of phenomena, or trace even 
a few stages in their near and remote causes and their 
necessary effects. Within his own consciousness he 
cannot differentiate a reflection of the truth from an 
addition of the imagination. He is happy only when 
following a routine, and shrinks instinctively from the 
unknown, with its demands on attention, observation, 
rational interpretation, and personal judgment, action, 
and resolution. Although the species has existed for 
millions of years, man's power of adaptation is but 
very moderately developed, and in the course of the 
struggle to maintain himself against unfriendly nature 
he has done no more than acquire a few useful apti- 
tudes, which he hastens to employ, with the least pos- 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 271 

sible exertion, by organizing them as habits. The con- 
ditions of his life demand that he should be ever on the 
war-path against nature, but he evades the encounter 
whenever he can by following a routine which consists 
in a dubious peace or at least an armistice with his 
hostile environment. 

Above this average level there rises a minority more 
highly developed and more efficient. The superior 
man has a more perfect brain. The biochemical proc- 
esses of Its cell plasm are more energetic, and the brain 
itself retains plasticity much longer, and in exceptional 
cases even unto extreme old age. The consequences of 
these anatomical and physiological premises are mo- 
mentous. The temperament of the superior man is 
vital, his character Is firm. His feelings are strong, 
and his will powerful and sustained. He acts, there- 
fore, with decision and energy. His attention Is not 
easily fatigued. No distractions avail to divert It. 
He is thus a keen observer of the aspects of reality 
that are of Importance for himself. His Inhibitions 
are swift and sure, and his Instincts completely subject 
to his will. His will, guided by his judgment, restrains 
automatism within narrow bounds, or suppresses it alto- 
gether. Instead of allowing himself to be enslaved 
to the convenience of habit, he adapts himself to every 
modification of his environment. His reactions are not 
mechanical. Every change elicits a new, appropriate 
response. Perhaps his most striking peculiarity, and 
the real cause of his superiority to the average man. 
Is the feeling for the concrete which is the result of his 
faculty of sustained and concentrated attention. 

I must dwell for a little on this point. We are accus- 



272 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

tomed to regard the power of abstraction as the pecuHar 
glory of human thought, which we conceive to be 
superior to that of animals, limited as it is to the con- 
crete, and incapable of general concepts. This is, how- 
ever, probably an error in which philosophy has for 
centuries been involved, and from which we should have 
the courage to free ourselves. Abstraction is, of all 
mental processes, the most delicate and uncertain. In 
reality, phenomena follow one another in space and 
time, and no two are ever identical. Our perception 
becomes accustomed to neglect the less striking differ- 
ences between them, and to dwell on the striking points 
of resemblance; so gradually, we begin to regard the 
resemblances as essential, and the differences as acces- 
sory, and thus, on this basis of resemblance, we com- 
bine all individual concrete phenomena In a single idea. 
This synthetic idea is an abstraction. It is arrived at 
in the same way as the composite photography of 
Galton and Spencer, and has the same significance. It 
is well known that Galton got his pictures by placing 
before the photographic lens a number of photographs 
of equal size, one after another, under the same con- 
ditions as to exposure, distance, and light. The sensi- 
tive plate took an equal impression of each. Features 
common to some or all the photographs combined In the 
negative, and came out strongly. Those which ap- 
peared more rarely or only once came less prominently 
or not at all. The finished portrait is the sum of the 
individual likenesses. It has a distant resemblance to i 
them all without being like any. It Is an ideal scheme 
of all the photographs that composed it, but in no sense 
an aspect of the real. Galton promised himself weighty 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 273 

results from his method. It could not produce them, 
for it permits the synthesis of all possible phenomena 
possessing any feature in common, without stipulating 
that this feature should be essential to any. A synthe- 
sis uniting components thus arbitrarily selected is a piece 
of foolery that may be amusing, but tells us nothing 
worth knowing about the component parts. 

In the same way, abstraction unites certain individual 
features belonging to a series of concrete phenomena — 
features that need only be the most obvious, not the 
most important. Abstraction thus arises from an un- 
conscious selection from among the elements of any 
phenomenon, by retaining this and neglecting that. It 
is an interpretation: it involves a preconceived opinion 
about the phenomenon, a judgment as to what is and 
what Is not important. It imposes upon perception 
subjective requirements that must twist and mutilate it, 
and are an incessant source of errors. 

Biologically, abstract thought is necessary to spare 
the brain much tedious labour, and permit it to acquire 
from isolated perceptions a connected image of the 
world possessing rational significance. But this advan- 
tage is obtained at the cost of grave disadvantages. 
Abstract thought is certainly a pleasing relief from the 
concentrated attention involved in the effort to observe 
and comprehend reality, but it loses in reliability what 
it gains in ease. It departs too easily from the concrete 
phenomenon, which alone possesses objective truth, and 
creates subjective illusion in the consciousness instead of 
knowledge. The more concrete a man's thought, the 
greater his mastery of reality. Some of the most im- 
portant discoveries have been due to that sustained 



274 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

attention to the minute differences of similar phenomena 
with which abstraction thinks to dispense. By such 
means Ramsay found argon, neon, xenon, and hehum in 
air; Curie and his wife extracted radium from uranium; 
and JaviUier ^ proved that one unit of zinc, of which the 
significance in plant life was entirely unknown, will 
produce a hundred thousand times its own weight in 
the Aspergillus niger. 

The distrust with which abstract reasoning should 
be regarded applies still more strongly to reasoning by 
analogy or Intuition. Each of these methods Is a source 
of ideas and judgments in the consciousness which it 
takes for knowledge. They are easy, comfortable 
methods, but they lead too often to pathless quagmires 
of error and delusion. Analogies, like intuitions, con- 
tain a small kernel of usefulness. When there Is a 
partial resemblance between two phenomena, it is natu- 
ral to refer this resemblance to some cause which the 
two are supposed to have in common, and to assume 
the existence of a connection between them closer than 
the visible resemblance itself. In this way the known 
may be the key to, the unknown, and analogy may ac- 
quire a heuristic value. But the greatest care must be 
taken in the use of analogies. It must always be re- 
membered that the dissimilarities of the phenomena 
have their causes as well as the similarities; that the 
difference between them and the fact that they are not 
related Is proved as surely by the one set of character- 
istics as relationship can be by the other; and that It Is 
a logical error to identify phenomena on the ground of 

^ Javillier, " Recherches sur la presence et le role du zinc chea 
les plantes," Paris, 1908. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 275 

certain resemblances, and overlook the simultaneous 
existence of their differences. Moreover, It is in all 
cases necessary to establish epistemologically that the 
resemblance Itself Is not a mere deceptive appearance, 
a subjective arrangement, amplification, and interpreta- 
tion of phenomena based upon our habit of thought, 
and proceeding from Inaccurate observation. If two 
phenomena appear to us to be similar because our ob- 
servation has in each case been incorrect, or because in 
each case we have introduced, from our own conscious- 
ness, a subjective trait foreign to both, which is the 
sole cause of their apparent similarity, we start from 
an error; and we arrive at an error if we draw any 
inference from one phenomenon to the other which Is 
based upon a resemblance which has no objective ex- 
istence. Intuition, too, can serve as a guide; for, after 
all, the sole phenomenon in the world that is seen from 
within Is our own consciousness. We surprise move- 
ments in It that we can perceive nowhere else, and which 
must remain eternally unknown to us everywhere else. 
Could we, then, but connect the movements detected 
In our consciousness with conditions and processes out- 
side ourselves, we might obtain a knowledge of them 
such as could be got In no other way. The great danger 
Is that It is seldom possible to examine the relation 
between our Intuitions, the strictly subjective move- 
ments of our consciousness, and any objective proc- 
ess In the world, and therefore we can never know 
with certainty the objective worth of our subjective 
intuitions. 

The superior man Is marked by realism. He hardly 
knows the flattering delight of day-dreams. His fancy 



276 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

does not soar into cloudy regions, into a world remote 
from space and time. His thought does not occupy 
itself with any phantasmagoria of words, or with ab- 
stractions which, being devoid of any concrete content, 
can float aloft above the real. No feature of the phe- 
nomenon appears unworthy of his attention; he lets 
none escape him; he tries to understand or perceive 
them all. He would rather admit the existence of 
gaps in his knowledge than hide them by meaningless 
words or arbitrary fancies. With careful assurance 
he traces the concrete event back to its causes, and 
thence infers the effects to which he can thus advan- 
tageously adapt himself in advance. Thus he faces 
nature like a skilful duellist who knows his opponent's 
methods of fence, foresees and easily parries his strokes ; 
and in the battle of life he is as superior to the aver- 
age man, whose thinking is made up of abstraction 
and words without ideas, as an armed man with 
the use of his eyes is to an unarmed man who is 
blind. 

It is, of course, understood that the species does not 
really consist of two sharply distinguished races — the 
average man, whose attention wanders, and the superior 
man, in whom it is sustained. Between these two there 
are innumerable transition stages, and the differences 
only become striking when we take representatives 
standing at the farther ends of the scale. The superior 
man rises high above the average in proportion as his 
attention, the first manifestation of the inherent energy 
of his will, is concentrated and sustained, his conscious- 
ness filled by concrete images, his judgment in close 
touch with reality: as he succeeds, on the one hand, in 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 277 

tracing phenomena back to their causes and in foresee- 
ing their effects, and, on the other, in obtaining a rela- 
tively complete comprehension of the determining fac- 
tors in their development and mutual interaction — in 
proportion as, instead of stereotyping his associa- 
tions into fixed habits, he retains that capacity of 
silent adaptation to all the modifications of the 
external world which carries him on to ever new 
resolves, and to the ever more forcible realization in 
action. 

These characteristics mark out the superior man as 
master. He has what Hobbes calls " the natural 
mastery of force — that is, of certain individuals, 
impelled to command by the constitution of their 
brain." 

He cannot refuse the part, even if he would; It is 
imposed upon him. He could only escape it if he lived, 
like Robinson Crusoe or Timon of Athens, in isolation, 
solitary and remote from his fellow-men, or among 
individuals of his own type with equal natural endow- 
ments — a condition seldom realized, since the type only 
appears among the crowd and in isolated instances as 
a rare exception. Average mankind may scorn the 
thinker and the dreamer, they may entirely fail to 
understand the profound speculations of the philosopher 
or the creations of the artistic imagination, but they 
at once recognize the man of will and judgment, whose 
will reacts to every new phenomenon with a new reso- 
lution, and bow their heads before him. If In a posi- 
tion that requires new adaptation they discover among 
them a man who knows how to command, they are 
happy to obey him. They are so clearly aware of their 



278 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

own helplessness in the midst of constant change and 
perpetual flux, of their want of knowledge, the slowness 
and difficulty with which they find their way about, that 
they turn eagerly and follow the man who goes through 
the world and life with the certain tread of an old 
traveller. His directions, his commands, are a welcome 
relief from the necessity of forming their own judg- 
ments and carrying them out into act. Anyone who 
spares them this most troublesome form of cerebral 
activity is blessed by them as a saviour. Any physical 
effort, deprivation, hardship, or danger the commander 
may impose upon them seems lighter and easier to bear 
than the toil of self-determination, of making up their 
own minds, and the dread of having to find their way 
about the world without a guide. Thus the man of 
action, who Issues commands with absolute decision, 
and In which no trace of doubt, delay, or hesitation is 
discernible, masters the average man at the first glance, 
so to speak. Men have an absolute flair for him ; they 
flee to him. This is seen In every sphere, narrow and 
wide — In families, clubs, unions, corporations, societies 
great and small. All hasten to cast responsibility upon 
anyone who Is willing to assume it. All are ready to 
follow anyone who resolutely takes the lead. It is only 
necessary to step boldly forward to be recognized as 
leader. The crowd do not Inquire as to his objects; 
they believe he knows, and that Is enough for them. 
They will follow him Into morasses and up to precipices. 
No doubt as to the wisdom of their trust is awakened 
In them, even when they are being drowned and 
smothered, or dashed In pieces against the rocks. If 
death itself comes, and they reflect upon Its cause at 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 279 

all, It seems to them the result of unlucky chance, to 
which they are sacrificed by no fault of their leaders. 
The wilder and more boundless the claims of a com- 
mander, the greater the wonder and enthusiasm of his 
followers. Immeasurable and incomprehensible aims 
seem to them a special proof of his greatness. They 
resent making small sacrifices; but if the man they have 
recognized as their master demand the last and utter- 
most, they perform them with a sort of joy in which 
there mingles a pride in the greatness of their own 
achievement, admiration of selves In performing it, and 
thankful devotion to the man who has raised them to 
such a level of superhuman exertion. The average 
man can often be made to do things that he would never 
have carried out, never even have dared to dream of, 
things that the world is not wholly wrong in placing to 
the score of the ruthless commander, rather than of the 
obedient Instrument. 

To the average man the man of will and deeds ap- 
pears as a creature of a superior mould, outwardly 
near, but Inwardly Impenetrably remote; trusted as an 
equal, but incomprehensible as a God; a mysterious fire 
from which fascination and terror radiate. He feels 
towards him as his primitive ancestors felt In the pres- 
ence of the fearsome powers of nature and the insoluble 
riddle of the world — horror, admiration, and an Irre- 
sistible impulse to humiliate himself and bow his head 
In the dust before him. Hero-worship is a primitive 
instinct in the human soul, and grows from the same 
soil as religion; it Is a form of religion, a deification 
of that natural force before whidi man feels himself 
pitiably small and strengthless. Every great man of 



28o THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

will and deeds creates a religion, without wishing to 
do so — a religion of which he is the God. He is a 
God to those who submit to the compulsion of his will. 
In thankful submission they accept the fate that he 
imposes on them. Tyrants, conquerors, and com- 
manders have aroused enthusiastic devotion in their 
followers. They have accepted with ecstatic joy all 
the evils laid upon them by their idols. The average 
man naturally approaches the man who is sure of him- 
self and knows how to command with folded hands and 
bended knees. He does not distinguish between differ- 
ent sources of energy of will. The madman, whose 
ruthless will, checked by no restraints, is morbidly stim- 
ulated to the point of delirium, will, so long as his 
madness does not take a form in which it is easily 
recognized by the ignorant, and sometimes even then, 
rouse the same enthusiastic devotion and attract the 
same fanatical partisans as the sanest and most har- 
monious genius. One need only recall the examples of 
John of Leyden, Charles XII. of Sweden, or the Argen- 
tine dictator Rosas. Only the unconquerable resistance 
of reality at last opened the eyes of some of the ardent 
worshippers, and enabled them to judge whether their 
idol had been directed by rational judgments or the 
visions of madness. 

The eager readiness of the crowd to submit to his 
commands inevitably rouses in the superior man the 
conviction that he has a natural right to use them for 
his own ends. The only consideration that the crowd 
demands or receives at his hands is careful and econom- 
ical usage of a valuable piece of property. At the 
most, he refrains from exhausting the soil, or killing 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 281 

prematurely the hen that lays the golden eggs. The 
whole bent of the mind of the superior man who is 
born to command is egoistic, not altruistic. His will 
is directed to his own advantage, not to that of the 
crowd. Any good that accrues to them does so as the 
by-product of acts solely directed to the purpose of satis- 
fying his own needs. The celebration of conquerors 
as benefactors, and the devotion often accorded to them 
by the crowd, is a form of self-complacent anthro- 
pomorphism, like the attribution to the sun, which sus- 
tains all life on earth, of a conscious desire to gratify 
mankind with light and warmth. Thus, the gratitude 
of the crowd transfers its own sentiments to the mind of 
the great man, whose plans and actions are as little 
directed to their benefit as Is the energy with which the 
sun irradiates the earth. When Augustus gave peace 
to the Roman world; when Charlemagne spread in- 
struction and superintended law and government by his 
missi dominici; when Henry IV. wished that every sub- 
ject might have a fowl in his pot on Sunday; when 
Frederick the Great called himself the first servant of 
the State; and when Alexander II. emancipated the 
serfs, the object they all had before them was In every 
case the same — to make their own rule and command 
easier and more productive, and therefore more pleas- 
ant to themselves, by the perfection of their Instrument, 
the State, and its Institutions, and by preventing con- 
tumacy and Increasing productivity on the part of the 
crowd — in a word, by behaving like good landlords 
who manure and weed their fields. 

No doubt there exist, side by side with the men of 
win and deeds, men whose hearts are full of love for 



282 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

the world and dreams of universal happiness, whose 
thoughts and actions are not directed by their own 
egoism, but by the good of humanity as a whole, and 
who find their highest satisfaction in sacrificing them- 
selves for their fellow-men. It is painful to have to 
judge these radiant figures, who must attract the most 
profound love and admiration in all who behold them, 
by the dry light of reason; but psychological analysis 
must eschew sensibility, and no piety should compromise 
its results. There is something unnatural about a ten- 
derness devoted, not to definite individuals, but to an 
aggregate of unknown persons — an abstraction without 
personality. Men whose actions are animated by such 
a feeling as this fall within the category of the abnor- 
mal; they are mystics whose emotions are morbid and 
their instincts more or less perverted. They sway be- 
tween flight from the world and a fierce desire to redeem 
it by their blood. They are saints, reformers, revolu- 
tionaries. They found holy orders, preach penance, 
and create constitutions ; in more recent times they found 
societies and speak in the streets and parks; but they 
also throw bombs and set conspiracies on foot. We 
are only speaking of the genuine protagonist of the 
gospel of brotherly love, whose passionate altruism is 
alloyed by no conscious admixture of self. It Is un- 
necessary to point out that they find clever imitators, 
who gratify their greedy vanity or other sordid desires 
behind the mask of love of mankind; such practised 
cheats are outside our present scope. It is very rare 
for the specific emotionalism, the organic premise of 
self-forgetful altruism, to be combined with attention, 
with a sense of reality, and with judgment. The eager 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 283 

friend of man hardly ever knows the real needs of 
mankind as a whole, or of the greater part of it; he will 
sacrifice his whole life in the struggle to remove evils 
that, though widespread, are incapable of cure, or that 
occur seldom, and cause distress to very few. It is 
much to have helped even these few without thought 
of self. As a rule, however, the activity of enthusiastic 
philanthropists is not directed to the removal of evils so 
much as the provision of new possibilities of joy for 
mankind as a whole. They strive to satisfy desires 
felt by hardly anyone but themselves, which they have 
observed, not in their fellow-men, whose benefactors 
they wish to be, but in their own abnormal natures. 
For one Dunant, who founded the Red Cross Order, 
one Plimsoll, who put an end to the cold-blooded mur- 
dering of sailors by sending them out in vessels that, 
though heavily insured, were quite unseaworthy, one 
founder of vacation schools, there are hundreds of 
founders of Bible societies, missionary unions, ethical 
movements, committees for decorating balconies and 
window-boxes with flowers, associations for the aboli- 
tion of the hfting of the hat, etc. — societies, that is, 
of no possible utility save to their founders and a few 
persons of like mind. 

Great altruists have no effective influence on the 
average man. No crowd submits to their will. They 
are not capable of rousing swarms of followers to ex- 
ertion or extracting services from them. Their 
thoughts and ideas become powerful only when they 
are appropriated by the daring selfishness of some 
egoist, who uses any means to gain his ends. Thus 
hardened politicians, whose aims are directed to the 



284 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

interest of a ruling class, will carry out the schemes of 
insurance against accidents and the Old Age Pension 
conceived by the disinterested friends of the expro- 
priated. 

Compelled to adapt itself to unfavourable conditions 
or to succumb, the species has developed its nerve- 
centres until the brain has become capable of artificial 
attention, of knowledge, of correct inferences as to 
causes and effects, and of the conception and execution 
of extraordinarily complicated actions directed by aims 
that are present, not in a concrete, but an imagined 
form. This faculty is present to a very different degree 
in different individuals. The possession of a greater 
supply of the associations acquired by attention or mem- 
ory, more swiftness and more accuracy In combination 
and separation of Ideas, a more powerful control of 
the will over the motor stimuli — that Is, a higher general 
level of energy In the nerve-cells — gives to the favoured 
individual a superiority over those who do not possess 
these faculties in the same degree, and Inevitably makes 
him their master. 

Such are the psychological premises of all those social 
relations of men whose establishment, maintenance, de- 
velopment, and destruction determine the course of his- 
tory: on the one hand a minority of superior, on the 
other a majority of average, men. The former under- 
stand, by virtue of their sense of reality, their correct 
knowledge of cause and effect, and their penetration Into 
the regular connection of phenomena, that the easiest 
and most profitable mode of adaptation for them Is to 
use, and, if necessary, to abuse, other men for their 
own ends — that Is, the method of ruthless exploitation. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 285 

energetic parasitism. They possess the ability and the 
strength of will to subdue the herd to their service by 
flattery, deception, or command, as one or the other 
method promises the best result/ The latter — the 
average men — rsubmit consciously or unconsciously to 
their superiors, and make efforts, often amounting to 
self-sacrifice, to insure for them the most favourable 
conditions of existence; their adaptation consists in 
obedience to those who think, will, and decide for them, 
who perform those highest and finest functions of the 
brain for which they are themselves much less per- 
fectly organized. 

These relations, between the superior man who com- 
mands and takes and the average man who submits and 
gives, appear in a typically simple and luminous form 
only under primitive conditions. In the beginning, 
superiority must have taken the form of greater mus- 
cular strength or skill and greater intrepidity. Then 
the superior man's title to command had to be proved 
with fist and club, by practised wrestHng, hurling, and 
shooting, bold attack, and successful stratagem; he had 
to subdue the average man to his will by immediate 
personal compulsion, later by the reputation for in- 
vincibility. At a rather more advanced stage of de- 
velopment the superior man no longer subdued the 
average man by beating or strangling him, but by the 
moral influence of attractive promises to be redeemed 
at a distant date, terrible suggestions of supernatural 
power — in a word, by Illusions, which called up feelings 
of pleasure and pain, and enslaved him by means of hope 

^ Machiavelli, "The Prince": "The world must be governed by 
force or fraud." 



286 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

or fear/ In this phase the superior man is not a terrible 
warrior, but a priest, magician, prophet, or demagogue. 

As development proceeded, the family group ex- 
panded to a race, a people, and society was formed, 
conditions became more complex, and the influence of 
the superior man upon the average, instead of being 
effected direct from man to man, proceeded indirectly, 
through instruments. These instruments are traditions 
and institutions, which, again, are but the petrified will 
of former superior men. The law of least effort regu- 
lates the exploitation of the weak by the strong. The 
strong man wishes to economize effort as much as 
possible, even in his parasitism. His method is to em- 
ploy association of ideas and habit in the minds of 
those whom he exploits. He influences the former by 
symbols ; the latter enables him to build up and utilize 
permanent institutions which make and keep the crowd 
subservient automatically, and, as a rule, without any 
exertion on his part. 

Symbols take the place of the tangible methods of 
violence, and call into the consciousness, by association, 
the ideas connected with them. When the warrior has 
brandished his club long enough with murderous re- 
sults, he finds a symbolic weapon adequate to bring to 
the recollection of the crowd the bloody deeds accom- 
plished by the actual brand. Thus the battle-axe be- 
comes the staff of oflice found among the oldest pre- 
historic implements; thus the head-dress, which dis- 
tinguishes the mightiest warrior in battle, to inspire 

^ For the importance of the part played by illusion in history, 
compare, among others, Georg Adler, " The Significance of Illusions 
in Political and Social Life," Berlin, 1907. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 287 

terror in the foe, becomes the crown ; and thus the ruler 
exacts from the subservient crowd marks of honour 
symbolic of the unconditional submission of the van- 
quished. Obeisance, bending of the knee, prostration, 
folding or raising of the hands, are all postures in which 
the vanquished awaits, unarmed, the death-stroke of 
the victor, or the mercy which only his pity can conceive. 
Since the appeal of the magician and the priest is essen- 
tially to the imagination of the crowd, he has no 
weapons ; he needs symbols only, and these symbols are 
more numerous, and play a more important part in 
religion and culture than in the State. Since the differ- 
ence between the superior and the average man is a 
difference of degree or quantity, not of substance, and 
since their intellectual life proceeds according to the 
same rules, only with a varying degree of energy, it is 
not surprising that in time the symbols have a powerful 
effect on the ruler as well as on the ruled, and call up 
trains of associated ideas In the former which they were 
intended to arouse only in the latter. 

The ruler is preserved, by that sense of reality which 
we have learned to regard as his most salient character- 
istic, from connecting with the external signs belonging 
to the supreme power, with the lofty dignitaries of 
State and of the ruling class, the vague Ideas of trem- 
bling veneration and the strong emotions accompanying 
them — emotions which they were intended to evoke in 
the subject; from valuing the symbols of subjection 
almost as highly as the very practical and useful dues 
that accrue from it. The primitive hero and conqueror 
swings his club, and the threatening gesture provides 
him with herds, wives, slaves, hunting-grounds, or what- 



288 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

ever else he wants. The civilized ruler appears with 
crown and sceptre, and is greeted with a homage that, 
though purely symbolic, gives him hardly less pleasure 
than the Civil List, not because homage premises the 
punctual payment of the Civil List, but because it gives 
him pleasure in Itself. Kings respect the orders and 
titles that they themselves confer almost as much as do 
those upon whom they are conferred and the crowd 
behind them. This feeling, far from being confined to 
kings who are remote descendants of the founder of a 
dynasty, and never could have risen to the highest place 
by the force of their own right arm or their own brain, 
is found even In men like Napoleon, who are the 
authors of their own greatness. 

We have seen that all civil Institutions spring from 
the parasitic desire on the part of a man of force to 
secure his exploitation of the many. This is the origin 
of retainers, bodyguards, a warrior caste, a privileged 
or noble class, regular taxation, and the machinery for 
carrying It out; legal, educational, and commercial 
arrangements, etc. All these Institutions survive their 
creators, and the crowd which finds itself born into 
them, and Ignorant of any state of things without them, 
becomes so completely accommodated to them, both 
physically and mentally, that it feels them an inseparable 
part of Its conception of the world, which It could 
not Imagine without them. This habit on the part of 
the crowd of living In and with the Institutions Into 
which It has been born will long afford them a secure, 
almost unassailable position. The continued existence 
of any Institutions which have already existed for a 
certain space of time is secured by the early stage at 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 289 

which habits become firmly fixed in the average man, 
the misoneistic horror with which he regards any dis- 
turbance of these habits, and the impenetrable obsti- 
nacy with which he opposes any attempt to change 
them. Without any knowledge of the psychological 
mechanism of this phenomenon of adaptation, organ- 
ized association, or misoneism, Aristotle perceived the 
fact empirically, from observation of reality, and ex- 
pressed it clearly in the words " To enforce obedience 
law needs only the force of habit." ^ 

The multitude have no historical sense; that has 
already been indicated. They know nothing and care 
nothing about the origin of things. It follows, from 
their incapacity to detect underlying connections or to 
trace back the causes and effects of phenomena beyond 
a certain distance, that all existing institutions appear to 
them as something given, whose origin is lost, like that 
of humanity, of the earth, of nature itself, in the mys- 
terious unknown. They may complain of them as they 
do of the cold in winter, its hail and its storms, but they 
accept them as they accept everything immutable. The 
obscurity of their origin gives them a mystic character, 
with which religious emotions are connected by the 
psychic process of analogy. Priests, who are, as a rule, 
sedulous servants of the government, rarely its oppo- 
nents, can easily describe existing institutions as or- 
dained by God, invest them with a supernatural sanc- 
tion, and demand that they should be loved and rever- 
enced. A system of public instruction, where it exists, 
will assist by bringing up the youth in the same views. 
The necessity of existing institutions becomes an article 

"■ " Politics," vol. ii., p. 5. 



290 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

of faith, which is either proclaimed as a dogma or 
staunchly defended by specious sophistry. All the in- 
tellectual influences to which the crowd is open unite 
in fostering the idea that any criticism of existing in- 
stitutions is blasphemous, stupid, ignorant, or mad, and 
any attempt to alter or repeal them a crime against the 
peace, security, and happiness of every individual. 

The superior man reckons with the organized habits 
of the average crowd. His egoism employs different 
means for its satisfaction in an old, compact, and firmly 
established State from those applicable to the simple 
conditions of primitive barbarism. He no longer waves 
his axe above the head of the individual whom he 
wishes to subdue; he does not even permit armed 
servants to spread terror before them; instead he mas- 
ters the machinery of State, and thus acquires at a single 
blow the power that in an unorganized crowd could 
only have been won by a series of acts of violence 
directed against Individuals. He disturbs the habits 
of the multitude as little as possible; he makes them 
useful. 

The parasitic egoism of the strong man assumes the 
most different forms, and passes, according to the de- 
gree of energy It possesses, through every stage, from 
the lowest desire for pleasure, through greed, vanity, 
and ambition, to the hunger for power and that Inability 
to endure the thought of resistance, any limitation of 
personal omnipotence, which Is allied to the hypertrophy 
of self that develops into megalomania. One Is con- 
tent with small satisfactions : he seeks to win his way to 
political power by his pliancy and observation of the 
idiosyncrasies of the men who are Its guardians. He 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 291 

is the typical opportunist. At school he acquires the 
good graces of his teacher by flattery and obsequious- 
ness ; at the examination he studies the little preferences 
of the examiners ; when an official, he pays court to those 
above him; by means of invitations, intrigues, and the 
influence of women, he becomes an academician, obtains 
titles and orders, and ends by dying as a pillar of 
society and the State, respectable and influential, sur- 
rounded by toadies, and envied by people in general. 
Another looks higher: he would not receive but dis- 
tribute honours. In an absolute monarchy he attaches 
himself to the person of the ruler, studies him, and tries 
to make himself indispensable to him — in other words, 
he tries to master him and use him for the accomplish- 
ment of his own will. Under a modern democracy he 
comes forward at popular meetings; is at pains to ac- 
quire an influence over the crowd and to win their votes 
by appealing to their emotions and prejudices, by mak- 
ing promises and juggling with illusions; at the same 
time he tries to force himself into the inner circles of 
the leading people. Once in office, he continues his 
activity until he has become a minister, party leader, or, 
in a republic. President. Others, though these are 
more rare, will not stop short of supreme power. 
They do not employ, or not to any great extent, 
the method of subservience, but rather that of force, 
much after the fashion of primitive man — that of 
mutiny, rising, military revolt, dictatorship, coup d'etat. 
They are represented on a small scale by such men as 
Nicola di Rienzi, Jack Cade, Masaniello; on a big 
scale, and on the biggest, Oliver Cromwell, Washing- 
ton, Napoleon I. and III., and Louis Kossuth. 



292 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

The instinct of exploitation that the man of will and 
deeds retains enables him to display his organic superi- 
ority in another sphere, in other fields of action, when 
it is directed to the amassing of wealth by speculations 
on the Stock Exchange, company promoting, the forma- 
tion of trusts, cartels, and monopoly undertakings. 
Mighty financiers manage average men in the same 
way as do politicians, courtiers, and military despots. 
They begin by conjuring up illusions and intoxicating 
weak heads with their delights; then, as their power 
grows, they intimidate some and rouse the cupidity 
of the others by rewards and promises, purchase useful 
allies by a cleverly graduated system of shares, and 
so build up a human pyramid, on to the top of which 
they climb over backs, shoulders, and heads. The 
amassers of gold belong to the same family as the 
demagogue, the party leader, and the king-maker; this 
is not the place to enter into the psychic differences 
between them. Member of the same family, but a 
poor relation, an unsuccessful cousin, is the professional 
criminal, who has to content himself with the poorest 
and least remunerative form of exploitation, because 
he only possesses the parasitic instinct, without the 
intellectual equipment in himself, or the social forces 
behind him, to enable him to satisfy it on a large scale 
or in the grand style. 

All these activities and careers conform to a single 
type. A man who is richly endowed by nature in any 
direction employs or misuses his superiority in order to 
subjugate others to his will, obtain possession of the 
fruits of their labour, or use them simply and solely 
for his own profit or pleasure. According to the degree 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 293 

and quality of his superiority, he makes them service- 
able to himself by compulsion, fascination, illusion, or 
gross deception. To take a few examples. The poli- 
tician uses the parliamentary system as a ladder up 
which he may climb from being a secretary to a mem- 
ber, parliamentary reporter, or honorary secretary to 
some political club, to member of a parliamentary com- 
mittee, member of Parliament itself, party leader, and 
finally minister. The scholar can use the organization 
of the University or academy as a means to obtaining 
a position and reputation independent of the worth of 
his scientific attainments. The financier employs the 
mechanism of the Stock Exchange and the limited lia- 
bility company to draw the small competences of the 
many into his net and combine them into a vast fortune. 
Even the criminal has arrangements at his disposal 
which render his evil-doing less arduous, such as the 
Mafia, the Camorra, the Mano Negra, and the unions 
of thieves and burglars, with a far-reaching system of 
division of labour, that exist in large towns and are 
also international in their scope. 

From the psychological point of view all institutions 
represent organized habits. They have been material- 
ized by the human brain, and have no existence apart 
from man. The superior man must therefore approach 
men through habit, and try to turn it to his advantage. 
He may either adapt himself to it or try to alter it. 
The lower order of aspirant adapts himself. Rabagas 
acquired reputation and influence as a revolutionary, but 
became reactionary when he attained the ministry. The 
powerful personality alters it: Robespierre found a 
loyal people, and taught it to convey its king and queen 



294 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

to execution on a tumbril. Yet there are some habits 
so deeply rooted and so strongly organized that no 
individual can stand against them. Cromwell failed 
to destroy the habit of loyalty in the English people, 
which made the Restoration possible immediately after 
his death. Napoleon could not overcome the habit of 
religion in the French people, or avoid a concordat with 
Rome. Were a negro of the highest genius to arise in 
the United States, a Napoleon in generalship, a Cavour 
in diplomacy, a Gladstone in eloquence, and a Bismarck 
in strength of will, he could never attain the highest 
position there, because the habit of race hatred would 
ever be more powerful than his genius. In Russia to- 
day it would be impossible for a Jew, whether he had 
been baptized or no, to rouse a mass movement like 
that led by Lasalle in Germany in the fifties and sixties; 
or to rise to the premiership, as Disraeli did in England. 
Each time that a personality endeavours to subdue 
others to its will there Is a clash between this will and the 
habits opposed to It: the more deeply rooted, general, 
and essential are their habits, the more powerful must be 
the will that is to overcome them, until it reaches a 
limit beyond which the power of a single will cannot 
go. Napoleon was one of the most powerful person- 
alities the species has hitherto produced. Yet he was 
overcome by weak contemporaries like Alexander I., 
Francis II., Frederick William III., and George III., 
because they were supported by the habits of the whole 
of Europe, with the exception of France, and could 
demand and obtain from their peoples exertions which 
even Napoleon's mighty Intellect could not call forth. 
It Is necessary to guard against the possibility of mis- 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 295 

understanding. All the preceding examples show the 
exploiter rising above his fellows In order to satisfy his 
desires at their expense. Nothing has been said of the 
nobler type of ambition, which strives for power and 
influence for the sake of serving mankind, and is Im- 
pelled only by the desire of making the world better, 
more beautiful, and happier. The reason for this ap- 
parent omission is that the expression " superior man " 
is used in a purely biological, not in an ethical, sense. 
It merely represents the Individual who is equipped with 
organic energy above the average, especially in the 
sphere of judgment and will. The superior man In this 
sense uses his superiority selfishly for his own advantage, 
not selflessly for the good of others. That this is so 
is painful to anyone who seeks to see history as gov- 
erned by a moral ideal; but it is an observed fact which 
admits of no exception. The selfless friends of man 
are not opportunists. They have no ambition. They 
are Incapable of making Incessant efforts to subdue the 
many to their will. Their influence is confined to their 
words and example. They spend their lives as settlers, 
penitents, or teachers, like Buddha Cakya-Muni ; they 
are crucified like Jesus, or, to take smaller instances, 
burned like Savonarola, or hanged like John Brown, 
the enemy of negro slavery. The influence of men who 
wish to save their fellows Is felt, as I have already 
shown, through others — disciples, perhaps, of developed 
will-power, who work for some reward, real or 
imagined, earthly or hereafter; or rulers and politicians, 
who find something in the doctrine of salvation which 
they can use for their own selfish ends. Elaborate 
psychological analysis would be necessary before the 



296 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

rare instances of the use of power by those in authority 
for the good of their subjects could be ascribed to pure 
altruism. Titus, " the delight of the human race," did 
not seem so benevolent to all the people under his sway 
as he did to the Romans. Alfred the Great was cer- 
tainly a benefactor to his realm, but, in giving peace, 
order, well-being, and education to his disordered State, 
he was in the first instance working for himself. Joseph 
II. is probably the best and most indubitable example 
of a philanthropist on the throne. But it is very doubt- 
ful whether his qualities were such as to have raised 
him, by his own strength, above his fellow-men. He 
was Emperor because born in the purple. He was 
the inheritor, not the founder, of a dynasty. It is on a 
materially lower plane that the altruists who combine 
strength of will with love for their fellows are to be 
found — St. Francis of Assisi, St. Vincent de Paul, Pea- 
body, Dr. Barnardo, Dunant, perhaps General Booth. 
But the men who scale the heights of power and make 
their mark on history have been spurred on by selfish- 
ness, and delayed by no backward glances at their 
fellow-men. 

At the lowest stage of civilization there is probably 
little difference between the individuals composing any 
race or horde. No one rises high above the others: 
exploitation is confined to the family, the wife, and 
growing children. The arrangements of life are de- 
termined by custom — that is, by habit ; such institutions 
as there are exist, not to afford privilege to anyone, but 
to economize effort by sparing the need for fresh de- 
cisions; there are no leaders or rulers, or they possess 
small dignity or power. Another case where mutual 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 297 

exploitation within the race or people is impossible is 
that of a body composed of individuals of remarkable 
judgment and will-power, who are, to use the phrase, 
a match for one another. Such a community Is super- 
ficially denominated a democracy; as a matter of fact. 
It Is a loose confederation of aristocrats who, Impatient 
of any overlordship, live side by side in proud and 
jealous independence, remaining poor because each is 
dependent on his own labour, and this in a primitive 
State, under natural conditions, can provide the bare 
necessities of life, but allow no one to become rich. 
Such, according to Vico, was the condition of the 
Quirites In the early days of Rome. History teaches 
that this condition of things did not last long. The 
gifted people overflowed Its boundaries, first to plunder, 
then to conquer; It made Itself master of foreign peoples 
of less force, among whom it formed a ruling nobility, 
and then carried out the exploitation made possible by 
its organic superiority, first In the countries It had sub- 
dued, then In colonies; finally, with the help of the power 
and riches thus acquired, In Its own land upon com- 
patriots who had been slower and less adaptable, and 
had remained at home In poverty. 

The limited extent to which the multitude are able to 
free themselves from their habits, and direct their 
thought and will along lines outside their organized 
associations, not only makes it easier for the superior 
man to master and exploit them with the aid of existing 
institutions which they occupy and utilize ; it also renders 
It possible for power to be retained by individuals who 
are not themselves in any sense superior men, and never 
could have risen above the crowd by their own strength. 



298 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

Through his heirs, whether they be offspring or suc- 
cessors, the strong man's superiority is continued be- 
yond the grave. One generation of the multitude hands 
its habits of obedience and servitude to the next, and 
one generation of mediocre exploiters hands the usufruct 
of this habit to the next. A conqueror secures the 
crown and sceptre, and all the advantages insured by 
their possession, to a long line of successors; and a 
group of successful plunderers transmit to their remote 
descendants the privileges of a noble class founded on 
force. The crowd is so completely accustomed to see- 
ing power concentrated in the hands of the dynasty and 
nobility that they regard it as a necessary part of the 
arrangements of the world, without which they could 
not imagine its going on. The dynasty, the nobility, 
and the high official class — so far as they are not the 
same — have long ago lost the faculty of swift, ready 
adaptation, the keen sense of reality, and the power 
of will and judgment that belonged to the creative spirit 
of their ancestors; but they remain on their heights by 
the habit of command, as the crowd remain in their 
depths through the habit of obedience. They have no 
doubt that they are born to rule ; they proceed with the 
same confidence with which the crowd follows them. 
The routine of government will often go on for a very 
long time, and not appear inadequate, until natural 
events, the progress of general development under the 
influence of new knowledge, inventions, or discoveries, 
or contact with some powerful and creative will, necessi- 
tate judgment, resolution, action, that transcend the 
traditional routine. Then the inadequacy of the ruling 
class and the decrepitude of the institutions created for 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 299 

their advantage alone stand revealed. The old order 
collapses, and a new arises in response to the will or the 
advantage of a new ruler and exploiter. 

The symbol of power is sufficient so long as no actual 
exercise of power is demanded of it. But when it is 
required to prove its effectiveness against the resistance 
of dynamic forces it refuses its office, and is revealed as 
what it is — mere imagination. The mace that lies be- 
fore the Speaker of the English House of Commons is 
an excellent defence of the rights and dignity of the 
chair, so long as they defend themselves and no one 
attacks them. An irruption of soldiers, such as that 
which took place in France on Brumaire 28, or an in- 
cursion of the mob like that of February 24, 1848, or 
September 4, 1870, would show that mace in its true 
light — an old-fashioned bauble. The habit of the many 
lends to the gestures of those in authority the force of 
actual compulsion. Not until that force fails to over- 
come decided resistance do they realize that it has no 
existence outside their imagination. 

All the institutions of the State and of society origi- 
nally correspond to some definite practical purpose, as 
to which no one is in any doubt, neither those who create 
nor those who suffer from them. They naturally appear 
rationally justified only from the point of view of those 
for whose advantage they are created. Very soon, 
however, they become a part of the general habit. No 
one troubles about their origin or remembers what their 
real object was. The result is that the institutions are 
irrationally administered, used for purposes quite differ- 
ent from those for which they were intended, or treated 
simply as means to some selfish end. Everyone knows 



300 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

the story of the sentry placed beside a freshly-painted 
seat to prevent anyone's sitting down on it, who was then 
retained for many decades as part of the garrison, al- 
though the seat had not only long ago dried, but actually 
been removed, so that no one knew why a sentry should 
be there at all. This story would epitomize all insti- 
tutions if so adapted that an overseer, specially ap- 
pointed and paid, were put to watch over the freshly- 
painted bench instead of the soldier. This overseer 
would realize for a few days that he had to warn 
passers-by against messing their clothes against the wet 
oil-paint. But when the bench dried he would cease 
to trouble about it, and devote his attention to winning 
favour with his superiors, and retaining his post. As 
time went on he would quite forget the duty that he 
originally had to fulfil, and only know that he got a 
certain wage every month from a certain office. Later 
on, if a new master were inclined to cut down this in- 
comprehensible expense, the watchman would invent 
some pretended activity, show the greatest zeal in the 
execution of his office, and probably succeed in proving 
eloquently and convincingly that to deprive him of his 
salary would not only be doing him a grievous injustice, 
but seriously undermining the foundations of general 
security. 

Private interests crystallize round every public In- 
stitution, and then defend them with the greatest energy, 
and, as a rule, maintain them long after they have 
become useless, and, indeed, harmful in many directions. 
Conflict arises when any institution is subjected to 
rational criticism on the part of those who have nothing 
to gain from it, are inconvenienced, disturbed, op- 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 301 

pressed, or humiliated by it, or simply take exception 
to its purposelessness. Men, being slaves of habit, shut 
their ears against this criticism as long as they can, and 
even become irate because it disturbs them. Those 
who profit by the institution in question accuse the critics, 
with indignant contempt, of possessing no understand- 
ing or knowledge of history, and show them, with an 
air of haughty superiority, the advantage, necessity, and 
justification of its origin. The rhetoricians and sophists 
retained by the State for its defence in the person of 
professors, members of academies, and Privy Council- 
lors, employ an abundance of learned phrase to prove 
the superficiality of the criticism and the insignificance 
of the critics from a moral, political, or social point of 
view. They are right, nevertheless; for when once 
*' reason has become nonsense and benefits a curse," as 
Goethe said, reason in the past is no adequate excuse 
for nonsense in the present; nor is an existing curse 
rendered more tolerable by the assurance that it was a 
benefit only yesterday. The alert rationalism of a 
minority with a keen sense for reality is as a worm 
gnawing at the foundations of the existing order, and 
perpetually testing their strength. War is permanently 
going on between the parasitic selfishness of beneficiaries, 
and the immovable sloth and incapacity of the crowd 
to trace the effects of an institution on the one hand, 
and on the other the keen perception, comprehension 
of the connection of complicated phenomena, hatred 
of routine, and strength of will of the few. Victory 
falls finally to those who display the greatest energy 
in that fight. The worst institution has never perished 
from its own inherent badness; the most rational criti- 



302 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

cism has never triumphed by virtue of its rationality, 
unless it was incorporated in a personality able to bring 
into the field an organic energy greater than that pos- 
sessed by the defenders of the bad. Moreover, the 
critic requires, not a slight, but an immense superiority 
over the defender of the existing order, for an attack 
on his own personal Interests, his own income, his rank 
and social privileges, rouses even In mediocrity an energy 
and enthusiasm such as Is only Inspired in persons of 
very lofty stamp and remarkable force by the unselfish 
struggle for improvement. 

The history of mankind is composed of the actions of 
individual men, and individual men are roused to action 
by a single instinct — by some strong and immediate 
need, or, to use a more general and psychologically more 
accurate expression, by some pain which they wish to 
escape. The energy of their action stands in ,direct 
relation to the violence of their discomfort: If the latter 
rises to pain or to torment and Intolerable agony, the 
energy becomes violent, powerful, even heroic. There 
Is hardly any difference of opinion as to this human 
mechanism among philosophers, historians, and sociolo- 
gists from the earliest to the latest times. The fact Is 
more or less clearly seen, and expressed with more or 
less vagueness or definlteness, In them all. Aristotle, 
In his " Politics," determines the end of the State to be 
the happiness, eudaemonia, of the citizens. According 
to the Stagyrite thesis, all the activity of government 
and society Is directed to giving the citizens feelings of 
pleasure. This is a mistaken substitution of positive 
pleasure for the negative avoidance of pain, which Is 
the only benefit which Is asked by the many of general 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 303 

Institutions or can be afforded by them. Apart from 
a few hangers-on of the court, who would like to share 
the plunder of the greater parasites, and obtain offices, 
promotions, and privileges at their hands, the citizens 
do not expect happiness from the sovereign; they are 
well satisfied if he impose no hardship upon them, pro- 
tect them against acts of violence, and at best assist 
in times of undeserved distress out of the common 
fund — in a word, if he protect them against suffering. 
St. Augustine is involved in the same obscurity as 
Aristotle when he speaks ^ of " happiness " as the fulfil- 
ment — or highest aim — of all " desirable things," and 
sees in it the lever of human action. No doubt every 
man seeks for happiness, consciously or unconsciously. 
In this general sense Aristotle's eudaemonism is an irre- 
futable truth. But mere longing for some imaginary 
state of bliss seldom, or very exceptionally, rouses him 
to effort. The real incentive to action in him is not 
an imaginary feeling of pleasure, but an immediately 
realized sense of discomfort, which rouses him to defend 
and free himself. Locke ^ has expressed this with in- 
comparable clearness: " The chief, if not the only, spur 
to human industry and action is uneasiness. . . . 
What determines the will is not, as is generally sup- 
posed, the greater good in view, but some (and, for 
the most part, the most pressing) uneasiness a man is 
at present under. . . . The greatest positive good 

^"De Civitate Dei," v., Praefatio: " Quoniain constat omnium 
rerum optandarum plenitudinem esse felicitatem." 

" John Locke, " An Essay concerning Human Understanding," 
twenty-fifth edition, London, 1824, book ii., chap, xx., p. 172, para- 
graph 6; chap, xxi., p. 187, paragraphs 29, 31, 37. 



304 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

determines not the will . . . until our desire, raised 
proportionately to it, makes us uneasy in the want of 
it . . . because uneasiness alone is present, and it is 
against the nature of things that what is absent should 
operate where it is not." 

This is true, and Romagnosi ^ might just as well omit 
the last three of his " four laws of civilization " — that is 
to say, its four motive forces — " the spurs of need, of 
conflict, of balance, and of continuity"; for the last 
three are meaningless. The spur of need is enough. 
Herbert Spencer agrees with Locke that " necessity 
alone conquers natural indolence in every sphere." 
Other sociologists and economists describe the motive 
force that dominates human action in different words 
from those employed by Locke and Spencer, but their 
meaning is the same. J. Lippert (" History of Human 
Civihzation ") regards the preservation of life as the 
motive force in history. Ward calls the motive force 
" desires," of which he enumerates five — self-preserva- 
tion, sexual desire, the desire of beauty, of morality, and 
of intellectual satisfaction. Yet all these instincts and 
desires are but special cases of a single instinct or de- 
sire — the instinct of self-preservation in its widest sense 
— and only issue in action when they are powerful 
enough to be felt as discomfort and an acute desire for 
a change in any given condition. A. Wagner,^ content, 
like Ward, to enumerate instances without proceeding to 
general laws, finds among the motive powers that domi- 

* " Del' indole e del f attori del incivilmento," quoted by R, Rocholl, 
"The Philosophy of History," Gottingen, 1878, p. 241. 

' A. Wagner, " First Principles of Political Economy," third edi- 
tion, Leipzig, 1892, vol. i., p. 33 et seg. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 305 

nate human action the struggle for education (Ward's 
intellectual satisfaction), for honour, for satisfaction of 
the conscience, etc. Action, no doubt, does proceed 
from these feelings, but only when any one of them 
becomes an immediate need. Subject to this limitation 
is Bentham's statement that " well-being is the object of 
all human thought," and Simmel's, that " every conflict 
for economic good is a conflict for the sensations of 
comfort and enjoyment." " Well-being " and " sensa- 
tions of comfort and enjoyment " cannot of themselves, 
as Locke has shown, initiate action. Gumplowicz ^ 
rightly recognizes need as the driving force in the con- 
struction of society and of history to-day, without ob- 
serving, as may be mentioned in passing, that he thereby 
refutes his own theory that the construction of society 
does not proceed from the individual. But it is obvious 
that a need can only be felt by an individual, enter the 
consciousness of an individual, and rouse an individual 
to action. 

This view Is In no sense contradicted by Herbart's 
statement,^ " The forces operative in history are In- 
dubitably psychological In their origin " — a view shared 
by Jouffroy, Auguste Comte, and others, and expressed 
by Lacombe ^ In the sentence, " Needs appear In his- 
tory, not as biological, but as emotional desires : human 
behaviour reflects psychical and not biological needs." 
This Is true, but so self-evident that It need not be said. 

^ Ludwig Gumplowicz, " Principles of Sociology," second edition, 
Vienna, 1905, p. 204. 

^ " Herbart's Works," edited by Hartenstein, vol. vi., p. 33. 

" P. Lacombe, " De I'histoire consideree comme science," Paris, 
1894, p. 32. 



3o6 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

A need that does not become an idea in the consciousness 
may excite reflex action, but not considered and co- 
ordinated acts of will. It is mere play upon words to 
express the fact that all human action proceeds from 
needs, or, rather, from feelings of discomfort, in the 
high-sounding phrase, " Men are only moved by spirit- 
ual forces, by ideas." The two assertions are not con- 
tradictory, but identical. Of course, the feeling of dis- 
comfort must be an idea, the need must be an idea, 
before it can initiate action. But it is the need, the feel- 
ing of discomfort, that initiates action through the 
medium of the idea. 

The motive force of pain operates in accordance with 
a prescribed form. The whole of life is a battle against 
sensations of immediate discomfort; every action, con- 
scious or unconscious, is the attempt to ward off some- 
thing painful, or modify some uncomfortable condition. 
Man, like every other living thing, up to a certain stage 
endures the discomfort, tries to adapt himself to it or 
put up with it as best he may, so long as he either sees 
no means of escaping it at all, or only a possibility which 
he judges to be beyond his powers, too dangerous, or 
too uncertain of result. Such judgment is to a great 
extent a matter of personal equation. The weakling, 
the average man who hates everything new, and is 
ossified by routine, will submit to suffering for a longer 
time, and will offer less resistance to it than the energetic, 
superior man, who is capable of new combinations. The 
former timidly clings to Hamlet's view that 

" Makes us rather bear those ills we have 
Than fly to others that we know not of," 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 307 

or comforts himself with Pliny the younger (" Letters," 
vi. 2) : " Mihi autem . . . leviora incommoda quod 
assuevi " — " A discomfort to which I am used is less 
troublesome to me." The strong man refuses to be 
accustomed to his pain; fear of the unknown does not 
reconcile him to the disagreeable known. A point 
comes when even the most insignificant average man can 
and will bear his misery no longer. x\s Heinrich von 
Kleist puts it (" Penthesilea," Act XV.) : 

" Impatiently man shakes from off his shoulders 
A weight of suffering more than he can bear: 
Beyond a point endurance cannot go." 

When this unendurable point is reached the tortured 
man has but one thought — to put an end to his suffer- 
ings. But here the inadequacy of his brain comes in. 
Every sufferer is distinctly aware of the fact that he 
suffers, and the immediate cause of his suffering is 
also known to him : he sees the beadle who threatens 
and maltreats him; he sees the hangman who tortures 
or executes the recusants, the agents of tyrannic power 
ready to incarcerate or banish those who fall under their 
displeasure ; he knows the Customs-house officer and the 
tax-collector, who wring from him the fruits of his 
labour or rob him of his possessions; he can account 
for all who cause him anxiety and humiliation, oppress 
him, disturb his habits, hinder his movements, offend 
his sensibilities, or do him hurt of any kind. But this 
is, as a rule, the limit of his comprehension. His in- 
tellect is not capable of going behind the visible instru- 
ment of his suffering to the power that wields it. He 
does not perceive the connection existing between the 



3o8 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

social and administrative system, the characteristics of 
a ruler, of an all-powerful minister, of a privileged 
class; the pressure of natural forces, and those who in 
the last resort, without will or thought of their own, 
carry a baneful command or law into execution. His 
hatred and indignation are therefore hardly ever 
directed against the real causes of his sufferings, but 
always solely against the passive javelin with which, 
themselves unseen, they pierce his body or his soul. 
Direct concrete perception leaves him in the lurch. He 
is reduced to imagining possiblhties, to forecasting the 
necessary effects of a given cause, to estimating all the 
chances of carrying out what seems to him a useful 
alteration of existing circumstances. In spite of existing 
institutions and the powerful Interests defending them, 
and in opposition to the habits of the crowd. This 
demands a highly developed sense of reality, the gift of 
keen observation — that is to say, sustained and con- 
centrated attention ; It demands the capacity to build up. 
Intellectually, a long chain of real and logically con- 
nected deductions, and to eliminate from that chain 
with unwearied watchfulness the arbitrary Inferences 
that the wandering fancy will always try to smuggle 
In for the sake of convenience, although one such. If 
left unnoticed, will vitiate the whole train by rendering 
it arbitrary; It demands, In a word, all that the average 
man does not possess. His efforts to free himself from 
feelings of discomfort that have become intolerable 
remain therefore, as a rule, fruitless. A people drained 
dry by taxes will maltreat and drive off Customs-house 
officials and tax-collectors, and burn their books and 
desks. Starving peasants attack their landlord, and 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 309 

reduce his castle to ashes. The people revolt, and fire 
and destruction follow. The result of those misdirected 
and spasmodic movements is, as a rule, that everything 
remains as it was. The sole advantage gained by the 
crowd is, at the last, that the burden is shifted from 
one shoulder to the other. 

A rising need not be concerted, nor planned, nor 
organized. It is an automatic reflex action. It breaks 
out suddenly, ravaging and laying waste, and passes 
like a thunderstorm or whirlwind, whose path is strewn 
by ruins and corpses. Even a rising premises the ex- 
istence in the dull crowd of someone whose feelings are 
stronger and his reactions more energetic than those of 
the others. He is the first to raise his voice and fist, 
and show the others the example without which they can 
do nothing. He is a Cleon, Jack Cade, or Masaniello 
— simple, thoughtless, ignorant, and at times no better 
than a beast let loose, but obviously somewhat more 
resolute and somewhat less ossified by habit than the 
others are. 

A revolution, on the other hand, needs leaders and 
preparations. It can only be the work of superior men 
organically equipped, in the first instance, to develop 
new ideas and combinations, then to subdue others to 
their will, and compel them to recognize them unhesi- 
tatingly as leaders and rulers. The first premise, there- 
fore, is strength of will; it is more important than 
knowledge, prescience, independence of thought — in a 
word, than intellectual superiority. Thus revolutions 
are readily aroused by enthusiasts possessed by one idea, 
or men who are decidedly off their balance, just because 
this mental disturbance rouses wild Impulses within 



3IO THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

them, blinds them to all obstacles, and induces them to 
throw caution and consideration to the winds. They 
gather enthusiastic crowds around them, who follow 
them as unsuspiciously as the children did the Pied 
Piper of Hamelin. It is only necessary that the masses 
should be suffering, and the leader persuade them that 
he will free them from their suffering. But the power 
of command cannot long be exercised by a strong will 
and a diseased brain. It must shiver at the resistance 
of reality, upon which its possessor had not reckoned, 
and which he can neither avoid nor overcome. 

When power of thought is combined with energy of 
will, the leader forms rational plans which he endeavours 
to carry into execution. Then the revolution, instead 
of stopping at destruction, issues in the creation of new 
forms. A new state, new institutions and laws arise, 
and their creators are proudly convinced that they have 
converted suffering into pleasure, satisfied painful needs, 
and given happiness to a section of mankind. Soon, 
however, usually within one generation, and seldom 
much beyond it, it appears that the reconstruction has 
been based upon a subjective error, and fails in practice : 
the needs of the many, far from being satisfied, still 
exist, and are increasing; the painful feelings, if they 
have slightly altered their character, have not ceased to 
be : the hopes, the castles in the air, the dreams of bliss 
that accompany any revolution or any personal en- 
deavour to alter an existing state of things, have given 
way to disillusionment, disenchantment, and discontent. 
The crowd is ready for a new undertaking under some 
leader of powerful will, who promises either to restore 
the old conditions, which always seem fairer in recoUec- 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 311 

tion than they were In fact, or to make them happy by 
some new plan. Thus revolutions are, as a rule, but 
halting stages on the path trod by suffering humanity 
on the way towards new adaptations which are to make 
its toilsome life easier and more agreeable : an endless 
search for the right track, and an endless wandering 
from it that cannot be avoided, though it brings the goal 
no nearer, since to stand still with one's burden is 
intolerable, and the notion that one is doing something 
to relieve it really does for the moment give a deceptive 
sense of rehef. 

Revolutions do not, as a rule, transform anything, 
with the exception of the hierarchy of rank. Generally 
they leave everything essentially as it is : the weak con- 
tinue to be exploited, and the strong to exploit. New 
modes of adaptation to what is disagreeable prolong the 
endurance of what is endurable. Only, other individ- 
uals and classes take the place of those individuals and 
classes hitherto privileged to exploit. Revolution gives 
to some what it takes from others. It is a practical 
test of the symbols and prestige of power, which are 
tried and found wanting. It gives the strong the posi- 
tion inherited by the weak man, who maintained It 
simply because his strength was a tradition which had 
never been tested. It destroys an appearance which 
corresponded to no reality. But Its effect does not last. 
" Red men are white men on the way; white men are 
red men arrived," as Alphonse Karr has said. A new 
order soon becomes petrified to a new routine; the new 
real strength soon dissipates itself In new symbols; new 
weakly heirs begin to live on the prestige of new strong 
ancestors. A long period of time presents the aspect 



312 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

of a succession of waves of more or less equal size. 
The noisiest revolutions are very limited in their effect, 
and do not go very deep. Tocqueville ^ declares that 
" even the great French Revolution has had far less 
influence upon the course of development of French his- 
tory than is believed." Lotze ^ lets fall a stimulating 
remark: " The unrest and variety manifest in constant 
revolutions and reconstructions, for which a connected 
meaning is sought, simply represents the history of the 
male sex: women make their way through the storm and 
stress, hardly affected by its changing aspects, renewing 
with perpetual uniformity the grand, simple forms of 
the life of the human soul." This needs one limitation, 
however. History is not that of the male sex, but of 
a small section of it; what Lotze says of women is true 
of the great majority of men. 

We have been speaking of revolutions. It might be 
objected that historical advance is not always, perhaps 
not even mainly, due to revolution, but to at least an 
equal extent to slow, tentative, and peaceful Innova- 
tions, limited in extent, directed by authority. The ob- 
jection would be invalid. From a psychological point 
of view there is no difference between the revolution and 
the cautious, official reform. Every Innovation breaks 
In upon habit, and compels new adaptations. Even the 
picture on a postage-stamp cannot be altered without dis- 
turbing someone and overcoming some opposition. The 

* Quoted by Robert Flint, " The Philosophy of History in France 
and Germany," Edinburgh and London, 1874, p. 313. 

"Hermann Lotze, "Microcosm: Idea of a History and Natural His- 
tory of Mankind — an Attempted Anthropology," vol. iii., Leipzig, 
1864., p. 49. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 313 

difference between revolution and reform or evolution Is 
not a difference of essential, but of mass, extent, energy, 
rhythm. Revolution requires greater strength on the 
part of those who rouse it than reform does, because 
it has against it the weight of habit, the whole routine 
of life, the interests of the powerful, the symbols con- 
nected In the minds of the multitude with the Ideas of 
power, legality, order, and respectability: on Its side, 
only the superior will-power of Its leaders, the sense of 
discontent of their followers, and the adaptability of 
the young, whose habits are not yet stereotyped, and 
whose discontent Is less patient than that of the older 
generation. The advantage of reform is that it can 
be undertaken with smaller powers. It is set going with 
the aid of the whole machinery of society and the State, 
which embodies the habits of the multitude. It there- 
fore departs less from routine, offends fewer people, and 
demands less new adaptation than revolution does. But 
the same cause operates in both — the discontent that Is 
felt and understood as the need for change. 

This need must be conceived in Its most comprehen- 
sive form. It may be of a physical or spiritual nature. 
In the one case It is hunger; in the other some longing 
or some aspiration arising from within. One demands 
food and drink, warm clothing, and a comfortable place 
to dwell; another leisure and recreation, freedom from 
care for the coming day; yet another, beauty and luxury. 
One suffers from not being allowed on all occasions to 
speak his mother tongue; another because he must obey 
command ; the third that he Is not free to live according 
to the belief that seems to him his most essential posses- 
sion. Exceptionally powerful natures demand room to 



314 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

express their personality by overcoming and ruling 
others, and imposing their own will and opinions as the 
law governing the thought, feeling, and action of others. 
This feeling and recognition of a subjective need that 
demands satisfaction is the driving force behind the 
conqueror and the creator of religions, the dictator and 
party leader alike. It assumes every form — ambition, 
the competitive instinct, the desire for pleasure, pride, 
impatience, adventurousness, revenge; it is capable of 
every degree, from the languorous trouble of the mere 
longing reverie, which is satisfied with a vision or a sigh, 
or at best exhausts itself in some artistic activity, to the 
racking agony that seeks relief in violent deeds. 

Human events, from the greatest to the smallest, fall 
under the same formulae, which are always determined 
by the same psychic laws. The fundamental character- 
istic of adaptability is common to every living species, 
and not confined to humanity. In the case of average 
man, it is limited by the early age at which associations 
are organized and stereotyped into habits : superior men 
retain it longer and with more freedom, and are able to 
dissolve old thought complexes quickly and easily, and 
combine new. If these men combine unusual strength 
of will with their power of personal thought, they are 
the predestined rulers and leaders of the multitude, 
whom they use as instruments for the satisfaction of 
their needs, binding them to their service partly by 
compulsion, partly by promises of lightening their lot 
and satisfying their desires. Compulsion is exercised 
by personal force or by the weight of existing institutions 
which have been mastered; but in the last resort this 
appropriation of the machinery of government is the 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREMISES 315 

victory of superior personality over the men who contort 
the machine. All action proceeds from a strongly-felt 
need; its direction and aims are determined by judg- 
ment based on experience. The more scanty are men's 
experiences, the more incompletely they are understood 
and retained, and the more erroneously they are inter- 
preted, the more unsuited will the resultant actions be 
to satisfy the need. Thus human life Is a strenuous 
process of rushing from one painful condition to another 
— a search, for the most part vain, for the satisfaction 
of needs that are always stabbing the consciousness 
afresh. But as ignorance diminishes and knowledge 
increases, the possibility grows that, if not the average, 
at least the superior men, and an increasing number of 
them, may be freed from the sense of pain. Such free- 
dom from pain has almost always been in the last resort 
the result of a parasitic use of the exertions of others. 
Whether this must always be so will be considered in 
the following chapter. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 

For centuries thinkers have raised the question whether 
progress exists. Those who deny it are as numerous, as 
eloquent, and as well supported by proof as those who 
maintain it. The ancients, as a rule, did not believe in 
it. They had a vague suspicion that the world proc- 
esses eternally pursued the same course, which they 
conceived of as a circular movement, perpetually recur- 
ring to the point at which it started. This is the mean- 
ing of the Orphic pictures and the mysterious teaching 
of Linus, and it is the view expressed in their different 
ways by Hesiod, Heraclitus, Democritus, Empedocles, 
Plato, and Zeno. Aristotle says clearly: " Everything is 
a cycle . . . the age of man, government, and the 
earth itself with its blossoming and withering away." 
Thucydides, too, rejects the notion of progress. Every- 
thing, he teaches, will always be as it is, so long as men 
are what they are — an extraordinarily superficial way 
of speaking, one must remark. Progress surely consists 
in men's not remaining as they are; and the question to 
be answered is, precisely. Are men as they were, and 
will they always be as they are? 

The Pythagoreans, whose mystic astro-cosmology 
placed everything under the influence of the stars, were 
convinced that all the phenomena of the world and 

316 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 317 

human life must repeat themselves down to the smallest 
detail whenever a precisely similar constellation ap- 
peared in the heavens — an astrological form of the cycle 
theory of the Greek philosophers. Cicero ^ is literally 
repeating the doctrines of his Hellenic teachers when 
he speaks of the " wonderful cycles of political revolu- 
tions and changes." In so far as the ancients admitted 
the existence of change, they held it to be change for the 
worse. The Brahminical doctrine of the four Yugas, or 
ages of the world, held the earliest Yuga, said to have 
lasted for 4,800 years, to be the most perfect, the age 
of truth, and the omnipotence of the gods. In the 
same way the Greeks and Romans placed the golden age 
of happiness and peace in the past. The passages in 
Ovid (Aurea prima sata est setas," etc. — " Metamor- 
phoses," i. 89 et seq.) and Horace ("^Etas majorum, 
pejor avis, tulit — Nos nequiores, mox daturos, Pro- 
geniem vitiosiorem " — " The time of our fathers, in- 
ferior to that of our grandfathers, produced our In- 
ferior race, to give birth to a progeny even more 
despicable ") expressing this view are familiar to every- 
one. 

The moderns generally took a narrower view of the 
problem of progress : instead of including the world as 
a whole, they limited it to the human race. Machla- 
velli confined himself to the moral issue. " The 
world," he says in the Preface to the second book of 
his " Discourse on Titus Livius," " has always con- 
tained the same quantity of virtue and vice." Jean 
Bodin fully shares the views of Machiavelli and the 

' " De Republica," i. 29 : " Miri sunt orbes et quasi circuitus in 
rebus publicis commutationum et vicissitudinum." 



3i8 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

ancients. Human transformations — " velut In orbem 
redire videntur " — seem to recur In a cycle. He does 
not believe In moral progress: the quantity of virtue 
and vice always remains the same. On the other hand, 
he is convinced that there has been material progress: 
his own, the sixteenth, century, seems to him, especially 
in the Industrial sphere, to have surpassed all previous 
ones, In proof of which he adduces the sole — to him 
sufficient — instance of the new art of printing. Gioberti 
will have nothing to do with the notion of progress. 
At the close of the seventeenth century an active dis- 
pute ^ went on between those who supported and those 
who opposed the Idea, turning, however, on both sides, 
solely on the question of progress in the sphere of art 
and poetry. It Is noteworthy that even then many able 
judges of undoubted taste upheld the superiority of the 
moderns over the ancients, although but a small part of 
the works that form the proud possession of mankind 
to-day were then in existence. Goethe holds that " men 
become cleverer and more intelligent, but not better, 
happier, or more effective In action." 

Another great poet, Lamartine, teaches that " the 
notion of progress is a dream, a Utopia, an absurdity." 
Schopenhauer opposes the notion of progress on a priori 
grounds. " Since the world is eternal, the theory of 
progress is necessarily false." This proposition postu- 
lates what is not proved, and is Incapable of proof — 
the eternity of the world. If the postulate be admitted 
— and it Is impossible not to admit It — the proposition 

* Perrault, "Parallele des anciens et des modernes," Paris, 1688. 
Cf. also Hippolyte Rigaut, " Histoire de la querelle des anciens et des 
modernes," Paris, 1856. 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 319 

is logically Irrefutable. It applies, however, to the uni- 
verse, and not to humanity, which does not share its 
eternity. Lotze cleverly evades the obligation of de- 
ciding for one solution or the other. He admits prog- 
ress in the sphere of knowledge, in the sense of the slow 
discovery of the unalterable laws that govern the world. 
In other words, progress consists In the recognition that 
there can be no progress. In another passage (" Mi- 
crocosm," vol. ill., p. 29) he is less cautious, and admits 
frankly, " In history progress is hardly discernible." 
Following VIco, who revived the cyclical theory of the 
ancients in his " RicorsI " — the constant repetition of 
the same events — Odysse Barot teaches ("Lettres sur 
la Philosophic de I'Histoire") that "progress is the 
swing of a pendulum, perpetually backwards and for- 
wards," and development " the ceaseless recurrence of 
the same facts and thoughts." Fontenelle finds " the 
heart always the same, the intellect perfecting itself; 
passions, virtues, vices unaltered; knowledge increas- 
ing." Fenelon, that worthy optimist, will not even 
admit so much. He maintains, long before Rousseau, 
that " justice, wisdom, all the virtues, belong to the 
semi-savage state: all the vices arise and develop with 
civilization." 

These testimonies could easily be multiplied. 
Enough have been quoted. On the other side we have 
Descartes decisively maintaining the reality of prog- 
ress. Bacon ^ has no doubt of the superiority of the 
moderns over the ancients — at least, in science. Leib- 

^ " Novum Organum," i., Aphorismus 84: "... a nostra aetate 
(si vires suas nosset et experiri et intendere vellet) major multo quam 
a priscis temporibus expectari par est. . . ." 



320 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

nitz ^ is not quite certain whether progress exists : " The 
human race may possibly attain in the course of time a 
higher degree of perfection than we can at present 
imagine." The Abbe St. Pierre naturally believes in a 
glorious unbroken progress, and so, which is more sur- 
prising, does Diderot. Condorcet boldly calls his sur- 
vey of history and the philosophy of history a " view 
of the progress of mankind," and draws a fascinating 
picture of a future in which war will be unknown, the 
universal brotherhood of mankind realized, communi- 
cation carried on by a common lauguage, and the enjoy- 
ment of life prolonged indefinitely. Reason will create 
a paradise for mankind. Condorcet, moreover, is only 
developing, with superfluous additions, the views already 
expressed by Turgot in his " Second Discourse on the 
Gradual Progress of the Human Spirit." The point 
of view of Turgot and Condorcet was shared by Kant 
and also by St. Simon, whose dreams of the future carry 
him to Paradise itself. Cousin declares, in the concise 
and dictatorial manner he imitated from Hegel: " His- 
tory is the development of humanity in space and time, 
and the conception of development includes the notion 
of progress." Auguste Comte frankly admits the fact 
of progress, with the reservation that it is no unmixed 
blessing. Its tragic aspect, to his mind. Is the division 
of labor, which, while raising man above the animals, 
removes him from nature, and consigns him to depend- 
ence on an organized society, which leads to exploitation 
and other evils unknown among animals. Michelet sees 
the whole of history as a single, permanent progress 
towards freedom. Lubbock, Tyler, and J. S. Mill are 

^ " Theodicee," iii., § 341. 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 321 

likewise convinced of progress; Buckle disbelieves in it 
in the moral sphere, but accepts it for science and knowl- 
edge. 

It appears from this hasty review that the belief or 
disbelief in progress coincides with optimism and 
pessimism. Robust and practical people like the ma- 
jority of Enghshmen, gay, self-satisfied children of the 
world, masters of the art of life, like the French, in the 
period of enhghtenment, see the world au couleiir de 
rose; while phlegmatic dreamers and thinkers who live 
in a time of political oppression or suffer from heavy 
misfortunes of their own see it in a gloomy and hope- 
less light. One must then believe that progress or stand- 
still have no objective existence, but are mere subjective 
experiences, dependent on the temperament of the ob- 
server, his youth or age, sickness or health. Were this 
correct, it would no longer be necessary to raise the 
question whether progress exists. It would be enough 
to establish that the constitution of human affairs ap- 
pears to present different aspects at different times and 
in different places, all of which may be subjectively 
correct, while all are illusions without any real exist- 
ence. It remains to be seen whether it be not possible 
to distinguish certain objective features in the changes 
of human condition, which would permit a judgment 
apart from arbitrary subjectivity, and allow the estab- 
lishment of a general law applicable to such changes. 

Before trying to obtain a rational answer to the ques- 
tion whether progress exists, it is necessary to be clear 
as to what is understood by progress. Almost everyone 
who approaches the conception gives it a different mean- 
ing, which accounts for their divergent judgments. As 



322 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

a rule, the word " progress" includes the Idea of an 
improvement. Paracelsus says, in the Preface to his 
" Great Surgical Remedies " : "I dedicate this book to 
those to Vv^hom the new is worth more than the old, 
simply because it is new." The assumption, far from 
being self-evident, is in urgent need of proof. Why 
should the new be necessarily better than the old? It 
may very well be worse, and is, as a matter of fact, al- 
ways considered by many to be worse. We have merely 
got another judgment of value as an exclusively subject- 
ive basis. We want to discover some objective mark of 
progress about which there can be no difference of opin- 
ion. Such a mark is found solely in the fact of 
change — or development, as it may be called — 
provided that development is not — ^as, for example, 
by Cousin — identified with progress, and therefore 
given a higher worth. We may adopt Herbert Spencer's 
definition of development as the increasing differentia- 
tion of a thing through the inclusion of new elements 
(integration) and the creation of new and more various 
forms. The creation of new forms need not be com- 
bined with the inclusion of new elements ; it can accom- 
pany dissolution, the exclusion of old elements. Disso- 
lution is thus as much a part of development as 
integration, and this should put us on our guard against 
regarding development as synonymous with progress in 
the sense of increasing worth. 

The universe is never stationary; all is movement, 
wavTtt pet. Heraclitus put into words a fact always 
known to man. The transition from the establishment 
of eternal flux to the idea that, in the eternally changing 
picture, the last condition must always be more excellent 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 323 

and perfect than the former, is due to naive, unconscious 
anthropomorphism. The real idea floating at the back 
of the notions of progress and development in the ordi- 
nary mind, not only in the " common sense " so derided 
by philosophers, but among trained students of mental 
science, is something very remote from the Spencerian 
interpretation of differentiation advancing through inte- 
gration. The motion is rather of an ideal form, an 
archetype towards which culture is developing. Did 
any such goal of development really exist, were there 
such an Idea, such an archetype, the question of prog- 
ress would plainly be solved. We should have a 
standard by reference to which we could Immediately de- 
cide whether one civilization stood higher than another. 
We should esteem our civilization as complete, and 
speak with certainty of Its progress. In proportion as It 
closely resembled the Idea towards which its develop- 
ment was directed, and drew near to the Ideal to which 
It was destined to attain. But this notion of the arche- 
type arose from observation of human behaviour, and 
later of living matter as a whole. The child, small, 
weak, and imperfect at Its birth, was seen gradually to 
grow, to develop, to blossom Into young manhood or 
womanhood, and attain the beauty of maturity. There 
could be no doubt even In the rudimentary brain of 
primitive man that the new-born child did not represent 
a final form, but was predestined to grow to the full 
stature of a human being. Here, then, was a recog- 
nizable end, to which the changes of a definite creature 
were directed. The grown-up was the virtually existent 
model which the child gradually attained. Moreover, 
there could be no question that the grown-up realized 



324 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

a higher and more perfect type than the child. Objec- 
tively he was more perfect, because he was in every 
respect more effective and independent; formally, too, 
because he satisfied the logical need of thought to see 
any movement, whose beginning and whole course is 
present to it in idea, carried to a determinate conclusion. 
Any halt short of this goal, or any deflection from the 
line thus laid down, causes disillusionment and revolt, 
while there is pleasure in the conformation of idea and 
realization. Here we have the schematic notion of 
progress. Man saw an actual evolution. He knew that 
it had a predestined goal. He was justified in regarding 
each new stage in development as a step towards that 
goal. Thus he naturally identified development with 
progress, and progress with improvement, and intro- 
duced into these conceptions a judgment of value. He 
then applied the scheme, formed from observation of 
human life, to animals and plants, to everything that 
appears Incomplete, grows and ripens. He had a cer- 
tain right to do so, inasmuch as the idea of a develop- 
ment that Is at the same time a perfection does super- 
ficially apply to all living things as well as to man. But 
the apparently unexceptionable scheme contained fal- 
lacies which the human intellect was not yet critical 
enough to discover. The development of the living 
thing does not stop at maturity. It proceeds beyond 
it, and downwards. It leads to decay and death. It 
is arbitrary to see the rise and not the fall of the curve 
of development, the blossoming and ripening, and not 
the withering and dying down. The one Is as regular 
and essential a part of the whole as the other. There 
is no justification for taking maturity as the archetypal 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 325 

condition, for life moves on, through bloom and matu- 
rity alike, towards death. It is as correct to maintain, 
as Claude Bernard does without hesitation, that the goal 
of all life is death; that the archetype towards which 
every living thing is developingj which it is striving to 
realize, is the senile being, who dies and decomposes 
with the exhaustion of his vital forces. But a develop- 
ment leading with inexorable necessity to destruction 
cannot be identified with progress in the sense of per- 
fection. The unconscious influence of these motives 
induces man to see the goal of human development in 
the individual at his best rather than in his shrunken old 
age. Firstly, from the utilitarian point of view, life is 
more effective at its highest point than at its end. 
Secondly, from the egoistic point of view, man is unwil- 
ling to accept the idea of development proceeding 
beyond his prime, because he finds more joy in his years 
of blossom than in those of decay, and would therefore 
like his development to remain stationary there, and 
proceed no farther. Last, but not least, he is influenced 
by the subdued ground tone of sex, which sounds in his 
ears in life's bloom, and dies away when it begins to 
decay. But the scheme of progress as improvement 
and increasing value, outlined from the observation of 
the phenomena of life, is incorrect, because it supplies 
no criterion of value for the different stages of life. If 
the aesthetic satisfaction of the looker-on is to decide, 
many will place the charm of childhood above the magic 
of youth, and most will prefer either to the solid virtues 
of maturity. If the degree of subjective pleasure is to 
be the standard, there can be no doubt that youth is 
preferable to maturity, although no thinker, however 



326 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

casual, would take youth rather than maturity to be the 
goal of human development. Thus the very movement 
of hfe Itself from one stage to the next, which suggested 
to men the notion of progress, does not, on closer exam- 
ination, justify the identification of progress with im- 
provement and increasing value. 

And to transpose a scheme of progress based on the 
phenomena of life to the world as a whole is utterly 
false. Only the most naive anthropomorphism could 
draw such an analogy. It premises that the universe 
possesses an ideal of its own perfection, related to it as 
maturity Is related to infancy, and that it is developing, 
like the infant, towards this goal, this maturity of some 
sort. No single observed fact justifies the assumption 
that the universe Is developing towards some riper, more 
complete form as its goal; on the contrary, all astro- 
physical observation compels the belief that in the uni- 
verse determined processes follow regularly upon one 
another, and the heavenly bodies pass in permanent 
flux through a series of forms that dissolve into one 
another in an apparently immutable order. Primary 
vapour rotates, thickens, grows hot, and divides into 
sun and planets; these, originally fluid drops, harden; 
the system gradually spreads the heat that has drawn 
it together over the universe, then cools off and congeals, 
until, after long periods of time, it collides with other 
systems, and is thereby plunged into conflagration anew 
— Nova Persei occurs to the mind — melts, evaporates, 
and dissipates, and returns to primitive vapour, to be 
driven In a new direction, and, animated by an altered 
velocity, to begin the whole process again. We call this 
course of events the rising and setting of worlds, but 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 327 



without a trace of objective justification. Nothing rises 
and nothing sets. Primary vapour is inspired by the 
same energy as the system of separate planets round a 
sun : the laws that determine the collision of two sys- 
tems and their return to primary vapour are the same 
that regulate the formation of the solar and planetary 
system from primary vapour. The one state has the 
same dignity, the same value, as the other. Both are 
but different aspects of one and the same regular 
process. If the system of sun and planets represents 
real existence to us, and primary vapour chaos, and 
we regard the return of the system to primary vapour 
as Its end, that Is but another result of the unconscious 
egoism that dominates our thought. Because we live 
upon a planet, and do not find In primary vapour the 
conditions of our life, of the only life that Is known to 
us, we regard the development of a system of sun and 
planets as the goal of all forces operative In the universe, 
and primary vapour as an end of all things and of all 
being. We make our life the criterion of the cosmic 
process, and, assigning high value to what Is advan- 
tageous to It, and a low value to what Is Incompatible 
with It, shut our eyes to the fact that the world goes on 
its way without regard for us, and that all the forces 
In the universe are Incessantly and regularly at work, 
whether mankind exist or no. Schopenhauer's argument 
that, since the world Is eternal, every development must 
already have reached its goal within eternity, sufficiently 
proves the meaninglessness of the notion of develop- 
ment as applied to the world. The Spencerlan formula 
is Inadequate, since the course of cosmic conditions is 
neither differentiation, nor integration, nor dissociation. 



328 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

but a continual movement, an eternal cycle whose 
rhythm is always the same. It is invalid to select certain 
sections of the cycle, certain periods of the rhythm, as 
being better, more complete. Individual periods are 
only better or more complete in reference to us, and if 
v^re cease to look at them in relation to ourselves, to 
humanity, and the processes of life, there is no longer 
any justification for assigning a higher value to the 
amalgamation of matter into spherical bodies than to 
their regular dispersion through vaporous space; or for 
seeing any superiority in a glowing sun and planets, 
capable of heat, and containing air and water, over 
an extinct sun and scorified planets without air or 
water. 

The universe thus affords absolutely no place for de- 
velopment, and still less for progress, in the sense of 
gradual perfection. All known facts compel a reason 
which is closed against mystic reverie to assume an 
eternal, regular, cyclic movement perpetually passing 
through similar phases, and to reject as irrational the 
idea of a goal to which the earth is constantly progress- 
ing. The notion of progress, derived from the specta- 
cle of the stages of living things, is strictly limited in 
its application to those living things. From the 
hedonistic standpoint, which regards pleasure as the 
only recognizable purpose of life, youth and early man- 
hood, as the period of life which is richest in conscious 
feelings of pleasure, must be admitted to be the most 
beautiful in the existence of the individual, and devel- 
opment towards that stage recognized as a real progress, 
so far as conscious pleasure is concerned. At the same 
time we must be extraordinarily careful in extending 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 329 

this point of view beyond the narrow limits of individ- 
ual existence, and even in applying it to humanity as a 
whole. The hedonistic criterion here ceases to be valid. 
Humanity, as has been repeatedly pointed out in pre- 
vious sections, is an abstraction; it is by a merely 
rhetorical simile that we look upon it as an individuality, 
a person passing through childhood, youth, maturity, 
and old age. Every man born and normally developed 
goes through the same periods of life; everyone knows 
childhood, youth, maturity, and grey hairs whether he 
lived at the first appearance of the species upon earth, 
lives to-day, or will live a million years hence. But there 
cannot be any special age of mankind characterized, as 
are the youth or old age of the individual, by feelings 
of pleasure or pain. We speak of happy or unhappy 
historical epochs, but that is a generalization that does 
not touch the individual. In the reign of Antoninus 
Pius, according to contemporary testimony one of the 
few halcyon ages recorded by the memory of man, there 
was sickness and death, and individuals must have com- 
plained and felt the misery of disease and old age. At 
the time of the Black Death and of the Thirty Years' 
War, probably the dreariest period in the last thousand 
years, there were young people who rejoiced in life and 
youth. No one historical epoch can be called happier 
than another, nor can the development from one to 
another be regarded as progress, from the hedonistic 
point of view. 

If we are to hold to the notion of progress within 
the limits of human life, we must seek some other cri- 
terion than the hedonistic. For that purpose morality 
has often been suggested. It is maintained that, from 



330 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

one generation to another, from one age to another, 
conscience becomes more subtle, sensitive, and clamant, 
sense of duty more profound and compelling, and horror 
of violence and injustice more immediate and pro- 
nounced. Unless it be held that the gradual transition 
from evil to good, from vice and crime to virtue, from 
indifference to love, consideration and pity for one's fel- 
lows, really represents no change from the point of view 
of worth, or even that it represents a deterioration of 
the human type by making it less efficient in the 
struggle for existence, this change must be admitted 
to be a development forwards and upwards — a prog- 
ress. 

But this moral criterion is uncertain. One objection 
occurs immediately, and has already been briefly indi- 
cated. From the social point of view the more moral 
man is doubtless more perfect than the less moral; the 
greater his consideration for his fellows — and that is 
what morality really amounts to when freed from its 
mystical wrappings — the more easy and pleasant are his 
relations with them. But the greater peace, the more 
restful comfort that may be acquired by this morahty, 
may be bought too dear at the price of a diminution 
of his resolution, of his healthy egoism and his instinc- 
tive vitality — of all those characteristics whose main- 
tenance is the condition of an enhanced and fully-devel- 
oped personality. Advancing morality can thus be 
regarded as progress only if the ideal human develop- 
ment be social or not individual. This postulate is 
accepted by some, rejected by others. There are equally 
strong arguments both for and against. But, apart 
from the fundamental objection that advancing morality 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 331 

does not necessarily denote progress from the anthropo- 
logical, though it may from the social point of view, 
there remains the preliminary question whether the 
course of history does display such an increase in 
morality. 

At the first glance it seems incontestable. Many of 
the enormities of earlier days have completely disap- 
peared from civilized life. Cannibalism, which once 
prevailed all over the world, is now confined to the most 
backward of savage tribes. Prisoners of war are not 
tortured and killed nowadays, but treated honourably, 
and all their wants attended to. The stranger, instead 
of being an outlaw, is protected in every civilized 
State by treaties and the law. It is no longer possible 
for the mighty openly and with impunity to sacrifice 
the honour and life of the weak to their own whims. 
Crimes of violence are on the decline. The value of 
human life is more highly rated. None of these facts 
need be denied or questioned. But they are capable 
of various interpretations. 

All comparisons between the present and any former 
stage of civilization rest upon statistics, which enu- 
merate and index facts, but have no access to spiritual 
impulses and efforts. The fact that fewer acts are 
committed which the law regards as offences or crimes 
is not necessarily a proof of loftier morality. It may be 
a consequence of weakness of will and indolence. It 
may likewise be connected with the fact that in a better- 
ordered State there is more supervision, and every trans- 
gression is immediately discovered, tracked down, and 
punished, so that the individual walks in wholesome 
dread of an ever-watchful and present authority. 



332 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

Within his consciousness, alone with his instincts and 
passions, civilized man is no more moral than the sav- 
age, and man to-day probably no different from man 
in the earliest Stone Age. In what way Is the anarchist, 
who hurls a bomb regardless whether it tear women 
and children in pieces, superior to the wild warrior who 
fell upon the enemy at night, and butchered men, 
women, and children? The anarchist is admittedly in- 
spired by what he holds to be a beautiful and glorious 
idea, but the wild slaughterer is likewise convinced that 
his action is splendid and heroic, and the bards of his 
race support him in this view by their panegyrics. Each 
follows his own impulse and satisfies himself, without 
a thought of those who are sacrificed. Is the speculative 
company promoter, who amasses hundreds of millions, 
robs thousands of families of their all in cold blood, 
and drives them to misery and despair, even to suicide, 
while he enriches himself with the fruits of their life's 
toil, any less guilty of robbery and butchery than the 
Sultan of Wadl-Halfa, who enslaved or executed the 
whole population of vast territories, and appropriated 
all their possessions? Does he feel any more consid- 
eration for his fellows than did the medieval Viking, 
who attacked the foreign coast with fire and sword, 
plunder and rapine? History records no enormity 
which cannot be paralleled in the near past or in the 
present. The most appalling atrocities of the French 
Jacquerie reappeared during the rising of the Esthnic 
and Lettish peasants in the East Russian provinces In 
1906. The cruelties of the Armagnacs and extortioners 
during the Thirty Years' War were repeated in the 
Spanish wars of Napoleon, in the Kurdish raids against 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 333 

the Armenians, and the incursions of the robber bands 
in Macedonia. Marius, whose acknowledgment or re- 
fusal of salutations when he entered Rome signified life 
or death, was no more blood-thirsty than Rosas in 
Argentine, Lopez in Paraguay, or Castro in Venezuela. 
The same evil spirits inhabit the soul of man to-day 
as in the days of our forefathers, hundreds and thou- 
sands of years ago. The chains that bind them are 
stronger; they are the ordinances of the State. But 
let them be once unfastened or even relaxed, and the 
demons will break out with cries as wild and rage as 
fearsome as of old. What, then, of moral progress? 
The crowd has a shrewd suspicion that there is no 
such thing. Every proverb, every popular saying, 
speaks of the past as a golden age, especially in morals, 
and praises the simple honesty and righteousness of 
their ancestors at the expense of the falsity and faith- 
lessness of their descendants. 

If we would estimate human progress, we must lay 
aside the criteria of happiness or morality; a third may 
serve us — that of technical invention. What a gap 
between the little oil-lamp and pinewood torch and 
electric light ! between the kindling of fire by the tinder 
and by a match ! between travelling on foot, horseback, 
or on a raft, and in the electric train or turbine steamer ! 
between sending a message on foot and by means of 
telegraph and telephone! between the club and axe of 
stone and the revolver, machine-gun, torpedo, and 
armoured cruiser! Why prolong a recital that every 
educated man can complete for himself? Here, prog- 
ress is undeniable. It certainly connotes no advance in 
morahty; the master of all the technical inventions of 



334 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

modern times is not necessarily any the better for them. 
They may, under certain circumstances, make it easier 
for him to satisfy his criminal selfishness. They do 
tempt him to abuse his superiority. As a matter of 
fact, each invention is the cause of new misdeeds that 
could not have been carried out at all, or not so easily, 
with less perfect instruments. Nor does it signify any 
enhancement of human happiness. Ignorance and indi- 
gence may permit man more subjective satisfaction than 
the most advanced civilization. It must be remembered 
that many inventions create, or at least increase and 
spread, the needs for which they provide elegant satis- 
factions; and therefore men, unaware of the needs thus 
met, did not suffer from them. Moreover, all the me- 
chanical marvels of the present only provide a small 
minority with new pleasures from which the vast ma- 
jority are excluded. The train de luxe which makes 
travelling a choice pleasure for the rich, carries the poor 
.man only as stoker or brakeman. In which case he is 
little better off than the driver or postillion of the past. 
Bank-books and cheques make the management and use 
of money much more convenient than In the old days, 
when it had to be carried In a bag; but the man who 
has no money had no money-bag then, and knows noth- 
ing of bank-books and cheques to-day. It Is unneces- 
sary to pursue the relation of the many and the few Into 
every Invention. Not the whole of humanity, not even 
the whole of civilized peoples, profit even by those 
achievements whose Influence extends far beyond their 
immediate effects. The mechanism of International 
trade to-day certainly prevents famine In any country 
so long as food Is available for export from any other 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 335 

spot on the surface of the globe. But In early days 
famine exercised its devastating sway only at long in- 
tervals, between which there were often considerable 
periods of superfluity; whereas to-day an excessive pro- 
portion of the population of our towns — the " sub- 
merged tenth " of the English economists — perma- 
nently suffer from famine, while the days of superfluity 
are now unknown. Details apart, it may be generally 
affirmed that morality and happiness or pleasure are in 
no sense dependent on technical invention. Men can 
be moral, and feel happy and content, in a condition 
of barbarism and ignorance, while the most profound 
moral depravity, a spiritual suffering to which death 
comes as a relief, and the extremity of brute wretched- 
ness may accompany all the wonders of mechanical 
science and the most advanced contest over steam 
and electricity. If, then, some who despise the 
world and have mastered life refuse to technical prog- 
ress any value for humanity, and even deny it recog- 
nition as progress at all, the point of view, paradoxi- 
cal as it may seem at a first glance, can readily be 
defended. 

But if doubt is possible as to the immediate advan- 
tage of inventions and discoveries to the great majority 
of mankind, one thing is not open to doubt or to argu- 
ment — that they are at once the result and the proof 
of a wider and more profound knowledge. And here 
at last we have a real criterion of progress, and one 
which enables us to establish the existence, not simply of 
mere movement, entitling us to pass no judgment of 
value, nor of a mere change in the relation of man to 
nature, but of progress itself. 



336 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

Since civilization began men have been incessantly 
perfecting their method of observing and recording 
phenomena, in order to penetrate more deeply into their 
connection and comprehend their laws. The transition 
from the blackest ignorance to clearer and more ex- 
tensive knowledge may have been quicker or slower, 
more or less limited in its range; but it has hitherto 
never stood still. No single invention of utility to man 
has ever been lost, no single truth worth knowing ever 
forgotten after it has once been learned. There is some- 
thing quite visionary in the notion now and then met 
with which ascribes to certain classes in earlier times, 
such as the Egyptian priests, or to individuals, like the 
adept of the Middle Ages and the eighteenth century, a 
secret knowledge that was buried with them. The tem- 
ples at Thebes were not lit by electric light; the statues 
of the Gods did not speak to believers through phono- 
graphs; no one ever possessed the philosopher's stone, 
which gave him eternal youth and transmuted all metals 
in gold; until pur own day no one knew of X rays or 
radium. Only the invincible attraction of the mar- 
vellous induced men to invent and believe these fairy- 
tales. Thus, Aristarchus was credited with knowledge 
of the Copernican system which was not really discov- 
ered till fifteen hundred years later. In this and many 
other cases a brilliant suspicion is confused with the 
clear insight and stern logic of proof. To search 
through ancient authors for indications of inventions not 
made till thousands of years later may be an amusing 
pastime; it is, however, completely sterile to discover, 
for example, a description of movable type in Cicero; 
of the air balloon and flying-machine in Leonardo da 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 337 

Vinci and Cyrano de Bergerac; in others of photog- 
raphy, telegraphy, and the telephone. In the Opus 
Majlis of Roger Bacon alone decided forecasts are 
found of gunpowder, the telescope, the air-pump, the 
air-ship, the diving-bell, the suspension bridge, the 
steamer, and the locomotive.^ Waggish interpreters 
have ascribed the destruction of the people of Korah 
to the explosion of a powder or dynamite mine, and 
interpreted the trumpets before which the walls of Jeri- 
cho fell down as cannon; Elijah's chariot of fire as a 
locomotive or automobile; and the myth of Daedalus 
and Icarus as the story of the first kite-flier. This, how- 
ever, is not serious. Man's needs have always aroused 
the wish for satisfaction; that wish was the father of 
ideas, and a lively imagination soon raised fabulous 
pictures of imaginary ways of satisfying the need. The 
difficulty is, however, to step from the playful activity 
of the imagination, acting under the stimulus of some 
need or longing, to the creation of something real; from 
juggling with ideas to making some definite technical 
invention or scientific discovery. He who takes the 
step has nothing in common with the dreamers who went 
before him, save the need that spurred both on. The 
step once taken, the ground thus won can never be lost 
again. 

It was natural that when the intellect awoke after 
the long night of the Middle Ages, after a thousand 
years of feudal barbarism, a dispute should arise as to 
whether permanent progress existed or no. In the 
famous literary war at the end of the seventeenth cen- 

^ Frederic de Rougemont, " Les deux cites," Paris, 1874, vol. i., 
p. 449. 



338 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

tury, Into which Boisrobert, Lamotte, Perrault, Ter- 
rason, and others entered with spirit/ Perrault tried 
to explain the undeniable fact of the disappearance, 
throughout many centuries, of all the knowledge of 
Greece and Rome by a comparison with rivers that will 
suddenly seem to be dried up, although they do, as 
a matter of fact, continue their course underground, and 
appear again in full force at some remote spot.^ The 
comparison, though striking, is not really applicable. 
Knowledge once acquired is not swallowed up by the 
earth, nor does it continue to exist beneath it. A teacher 
hands it on to his scholars; sons learn it from their 
fathers, just as they do in the time when knowledge flour- 
ishes, or, to use Perrault's image, when the stream flows 
above ground. Those who tend real, certain knowledge 
are never numerous; at a time when barbarism is su- 
preme they may be fewer than usual. But the type could 
only die out were it confined to a single spot and to 
a single class there, which was exterminated at the first 
encounter with some wild foreign conquerer. In this 
way the conquistadors butchered those who tended the 
knowledge of Mexico and Peru, before any relations 
had been established between them such as would have 
enabled any communication or exchange of knowledge 
to be made. But in the course of history no such case 
has occurred within the white or yellow races who have 
created and tended our civilization. All that has been 
acquired has therefore always been maintained; the 
confines of our knowledge have always extended, never 

^ Hippolyte Rigaut, " Histoire de la querelle des anclens et dea 
modernes," Paris, 1856. 

^Perrault, "Parallele des anciens et des modernes," Paris, i688. 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 339 

closed in, and the progress of knowledge has been 
constant. 

Knowledge denotes the comprehension by the under- 
standing of the ordered combination and course of 
phenomena. Intuition and supposition may lead to 
knowledge, by rousing and directing the attention, but 
they are not in themselves knowledge. It can only be 
acquired by the aid of observation consciously directed 
by the will, in rare and exceptional cases by involun- 
tary apprehension, or even by unconscious sense impres- 
sion. Consciousness probably enters into the origin of 
what is vaguely designated by the word " instinct," 
in so far as it is not a case of mere tropism. Extremely 
complicated movements, such as swimming, fencing, or 
playing the pianoforte, which must originally have re- 
quired the greatest attention and a sustained and con- 
scious exercise of will for their order and co-ordination, 
are shown to be capable of an automatism into which 
consciousness, attention, and will no longer enter. At 
the same time it is impossible not to conclude that every 
instance of this automatism — every instinct, in a word — 
has originated in actions directed by will to some pur- 
pose existing in idea, is the outcome of organized atten- 
tion. At the moment of the completion of this organ- 
ization by the nerve-centres consciousness is called up 
by the summons of instinct ; and instinct is certainly not 
knowledge. At the best, it may be a source of knowl- 
edge when consciousness, to some extent a looker-on at 
the manifestations of its own instinctive life, is at a 
given moment aroused by curiosity out of the dull 
acceptance of the usual and stimulated to ask the cause 
and purpose of the instinctive action. In every case 



340 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

then, knowledge premises an operation of the conscious- 
ness which observes phenomena with the aid of the 
attention, and combines its perceptions by means of in- 
terpretation and judgment into connected ideas. The 
more alert and sustained the attention, the more accu- 
rate and complete is observation, and the closer the 
correspondence of the ideas and judgments with the 
phenomena on which they are based; the more real, 
in a word, will be the knowledge. Knowledge pro- 
gresses as the reality of its content increases. If, not 
satisfied with the result, it is desired to investigate the 
mechanism by which it is obtained, the matter must be 
put thus: Progress is an increase in the capacity to set 
attention in action artificially, and to sustain it by the 
exclusion of distracting objects. In other words, prog- 
ress, in the last resort, is the development of the force 
and endurance of the human will, expressed in the intel- 
lectual spheres of attention and inhibition. The func- 
tion of the latter is to restrain the trains of new ideas 
that are, under the stimulus of sense impressions and 
association, continually trying to force their way into 
the consciousness, so long as it is directed to a definite 
field of observation, and to complete and logically 
develop the results obtained from it. 

It follows, from the definition of progress as an 
increase of knowledge by an extension of its real ele- 
ments of its content, that the imagination, which dis- 
poses of the elements of reality at its own arbitrary 
pleasure, and makes no claim to the exact representa- 
tions of phenomena, can play no direct part in progress. 
Art, too, as the creation of the imagination, is equally 
invalid as a criterion of progress. Therefore it was an 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 341 

error to try to solve the question of progress by a com- 
parison of ancient and modern works of art, as was 
attempted in the famous strife of old and new in the 
seventeenth century. Nothing is proved for or against 
progress by placing Homer above Dante, Tasso, and 
Milton; Sophocles above Shakespeare and Schiller; 
Phidias above Michael Angelo; Zeuxis above Raphael, 
or vice versa. The spheres of imagination and of knowl- 
edge do overlap, but not coincide. Probably human 
imagination was more fertile at the beginning than 
later on.^ The scanty knowledge then possessed by man 
could neither consciously nor unconsciously rein in the 
wild and tumultuous course of his unbridled imagina- 
tion. Its gambols, spurred on and guided solely by 
need, desire, and longing, must have been extraordi- 
narily pleasurable, because they corresponded fully to 
the organic appetites and flattered them. Fantasy, 
hardly impeded by the attention, which was as yet but 
little developed artificially, and limited by no considera- 
tion of reality, known or unknown, dominated the whole 
realm of brain activity, and developed with a luxuri- 
ance never found in the disciplined reason and trained 
observation of civilized man, except when his mental 
balance is disturbed by disease and he raves under the 
influence of acute mania, or of alcohol, opium, hashish, 
or other poisons. No poetic invention of later times 
comes up to the myths and fables of antiquity in vivid- 
ness and wealth of astonishing incident ; and even to-day 
the fairy-tales of savage races are far superior to the 

* J. B. Vico, " Nuova Scienza," second edition, Naples, 1730, book 
i., chap, ii.: "In the childhood of the world men must naturally 
have been sublime poets." 



342 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

artistic inventions of the same sort among civilized 
peoples. Progress clips the wings of Pegasus or nar- 
rows the space for his flight The need of being care- 
ful in his movements spoils his glorious turbulence and 
the beauty of his unfettered soaring. 

The progress of knowledge has only been indirectly 
of advantage to art, by placing at the disposal of the 
imagination a greater wealth of reliable ideas, and 
demanding, side by side with the development of a 
sense of reality, an increased co-operation of critical 
reason, and the logical faculty in the creative work of 
the fancy. Yet it is very likely that the productions of 
instructed artists may possess far less of that power of 
suggestion, on which their aesthetic effect wholly de- 
pends, than those of much more ignorant creators. 
They believed ^ in the inventions of their fantasy, while 
the moderns stand outside of them and regard them as 
merely so much intellectual construction. No modern 
could emulate the naive creations of antiquity, such as 
the hybrid centaurs, sphinxes, satyrs, griffins, harpies, 
etc., or permit the Gods to interfere in human destiny 
after the fashion of Homer and the tragedians. 
How unconvinced, and therefore unconvincing, is the 
treatment of the supernatural in Tasso's " Jerusa- 
lem " ! How difficult it is for the modern reader to 
make anything of Shakespeare's witches and appari- 
tions! They cannot possibly inspire terror, because 
the poet obviously does not really believe In them him- 
self. 

For what purpose does man make the severe effort to 
strengthen his will, sustain and sharpen his attention, 

' " Fingunt simul credunt " (Tacitus). 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 343 

control the aimless association of his ideas, and intro- 
duce more and more reality into those ideas — in a word, 
to acquire more, more certain and more comprehensive 
knowledge? For the one great purpose of all life — an 
easier and more perfect adaptation to the natural con- 
ditions of existence. 

Progress is assuredly movement towards a goal, but 
this goal is not mystical, has not been conceived by a 
supernatural spirit, or determined by a supernatural 
will; it is throughout earthly, concrete, immanent, the 
same for all life — it is self-preservation. Progress in 
knowledge permits all the resources of nature that can 
be used by man to be more profitably employed, the evils 
and dangers that threatened him t-o be more frequently 
avoided, pleasure to be increased, discomfort lessened, 
and the average duration of life to be prolonged. The 
immediate effect of increased knowledge is purely utili- 
tarian and biological. Indirectly it is psychological and 
moral. It increases self-reliance in man, and gives him 
a rising sense of his own dignity. It rouses resistance 
to selfish domination, tutelage, exploitation. When a 
man has reached the stage at which he sees that every 
assertion, instead of being blindly accepted, should be 
subjected to the critical examination of the reason and 
compared with the facts of experience, he no longer be- 
lieves that some men are born with a right to live by the 
labour of their fellows, and others with the duty of toil- 
ing for their advantage ; and he refuses to part with the 
fruits of his efforts except in exchange for useful and 
desirable services. More perfect attention and stronger 
will power enable him to fix one thought more lastingly, 
and to maintain it against the attack upon the conscious- 



344 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

ness of distracting associations ; to develop it consequen- 
tially, and pursue its ramifications; to form judgments 
In which the causes and effects of phenomena are fol- 
lowed up in close harmony with reality. Therefore he 
becomes more and more capable of penetrating the 
multitudinous and often exceedingly cunning disguises 
of exploiting parasitism, and defending himself effectu- 
ally against the sycophants who are hidden in the back- 
ground of old and honourable institutions, or crowd 
up to him under the masks of patrons, protectors, and 
helpers, and slip their clever fingers in his pockets. 
Villa ^ has correctly pointed out that men alv/ays aim at 
near goals because they do not see or know distant ones. 
But progress consists in a sharpening of their intellec- 
tual sight that will permit them to fix their gaze on more 
and more distant goals, and to penetrate and disentangle 
increasingly complex conditions. 

Increasing knowledge, moreover, involves a higher 
value for personality, and a limitation and restriction 
of parasitism. More and more the individual realizes 
himself as an end, and pays less and less attention to 
sounding sophistries that declare it to be a duty, and at 
the same time a virtuous and heroic act, to allow himself 
to be abused by others. At an early stage of develop- 
ment recognized morality is summed up In the Horatlan 
epigram, " Dulce et decorum est pro patria morl." 
How should it not be " sweet and honourable to die for 
one's country " when, as Plato teaches in the " Re- 
public," the individual is nothing, the State — that is, 
the country — all ? Not only the State, to which one can 
always assign some moral greatness, but the privileged 

^ Guido Villa, " L'idealismo moderno," Turin, 1905, pp. 205 et seq. 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 345 

and upper class within the State. Lucan ^ expresses this 
with incomparable brutality: "The Gods have never 
demeaned their providence to the level of your life, your 
death (the common people). The people all imitate 
the movement of the upper class. Mankind lives for 
the advantage of the few." Later moralists and 
philosophers cynically laid bare the inner meaning of 
such unctuous morality when they placed the ruler in the 
place of the State. Thus Alberic Gentills called the 
power of kings over their peoples a natural, necessary, 
unconditional, primitive right, like that of the father 
over his children. This, in an Italian educated in the 
traditions of classical education, is obviously a reminis- 
cence of the Twelve Tables: " Patri familias ius vitae 
et necis in liberos esto " — " The father shall have the 
right of life and death over his children " — supple- 
mented by the more practical " Quidquid filius acquirit, 
patri acquirit " — " Whatever the son acquires, he ac- 
quires for his father." 

Hobbes gave his views an even harsher form. He 
held peace to be the highest good, and freedom its 
greatest enemy. In it he saw the source of all evil, 
and regarded despotism as the only means of stopping it, 
with the Church as an instrument for the maintenance of 
order. What a chasm between the views of Plato, 
Gentilis, or Hobbes and those of Hoffding,^ who esti- 

* " Pharsalia," Lib. V., v., 342 et seq. : 

"... Numquam sic cura decorum 
Se premit, ut vestras morti, vestraeque saluti 
Fata vacent. Procerum motus haee cuncta sequuntur 
Humanum paucis vivit genus." 

' Harald Hoffding, " Filosofiske Probleme," Kopenhagen, 1902, p. 



346 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

mates the moral worth of a society by the extent to 
which it regards the individual, not merely as a means, 
but an end! Or, to take other milestones, between the 
" L'etat, c'est moi " of Louis XIV. to Frederick the 
Great's " I am the first servant of the State" and the 
" Declaration of the Rights of Man." I do not propose 
to enter into modern anarchism, which sees in the State 
the systematized exploitation of the many by a privi- 
leged class; in the idea of country, with its poetic 
imagery, a cunning speculation on the part of this class 
for trading on the easy sentimentality of the unthinking; 
and in the man without property, a man who, having 
no country and no interest in the State, would be a fool 
to make the smallest sacrifice in defence of the privileges 
of those who exploit him. Such views must appear 
abominably immoral, even criminal, when judged by a 
morality developed from the order established by a 
privileged class. Crude and undeveloped as they are, 
however, they contain the outlines of the morality of 
a new order — an order in which the individual recog- 
nizes himself as an end, brands all exploitation as a 
crime, and regards as a revolting and unnatural im- 
morality any suggestion that he should sacrifice himself 
to an end outside himself, in whatever flattering name 
that end may be dressed up. 

Increasing knowledge has one consequence that is 
apparently — but only apparently — directed against in- 
dividual autonomy and the sovereignty of personality. 

74 (trans. Galen M. Fisher, New York, 1905, p. 163): "The test of 
the perfection of a human society ... is, to what degree is every 
person so placed and treated that he is not only a mere means, but 
also always at the same time an end?" 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 347 

Man's greater insight teaches him that his fellow-men 
are unequal by nature ; that there are among them strong 
and weak, armed and unarmed; and that it is not easy 
for the former to resist the temptation to misuse their 
natural superiority at the expense of the less favourably 
endowed. Gradually his intelligence discovers a means 
of protection against the attacks of the strong in the 
organized combination of the middling. It is the 
awakened self-consciousness of the individual which 
determines him to sacrifice a portion of his independence 
by freely entering a community and submitting to 
limitations on his freedom, in order to save himself by 
the small sacrifice thus voluntarily imposed from being 
reduced to the condition of a slave or chattel by the 
powerful parasites whom he could not resist in isolation. 
At the beginning, even in this systematic union of the 
middling for mutual protection, inequality plays its part. 
Even here the superior leader comes to the front, and 
compels others to gather round him, in accordance with 
his views, by the weight of his personality, by persua- 
sion, command, or threats. It is a psychological 
process practically not very different from that by 
which the chieftains in early and very early times gath- 
ered their following about them ; but its end is the exact 
opposite. The superior man gathers his companions 
about him, not for attack, but for defence; not to ex- 
ploit, but to protect them. The end itself has an edu- 
cative effect on the community, and soon the most 
limited and least independent of its members sees why 
he belongs to it ; that he is, in it, an equal among equals ; 
that it safeguards his freedom and his independence. 
Thus, in the common social life of man, progress con- 



348 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

sists in the gradual education of conscious, voluntary 
citizenship. Exploitation becomes more and more dif- 
ficult, until at last it becomes impracticable either by 
force or cunning. Anyone who creates value will ex- 
change it only for equal value. Symbiosis takes the 
place of parasitism. 

The biological significance of this is that over a wide 
area progress brings the human species into the same 
relation to nature as all other living species. They 
adapt their structure to the conditions of their environ- 
ment, or, if they fail, succumb. Within the species the 
position of the individual relative to his environment is 
the same : each has to struggle for survival with his own 
means, and death is the inexorable penalty of incapacity. 
The position of the human species alone was, as we have 
seen, originally different. Their structure was not 
adapted to their environment. For hundreds of thou- 
sands of years they endeavoured to adapt themselves 
to it, undertaking that adaptation, not throughout their 
organism, but solely by their brains, with the help 
of observation, invention, judgment, and knowledge. 
Within the human species a great inequality in method 
of adaptation developed itself as between individuals. 
The more efficient, following the law of least effort, em- 
ployed the convenient and productive method of para- 
sitism at the expense of their less well-equipped fellows, 
on whom alone fell the hard labour of extracting from 
nature the means of subsistence of the whole species. 
Gradually, however, the human species rendered the 
conditions of its hostile environment favourable to itself 
by artificial means, and individuals, instead of practis- 
ing parasitism, were able to take direct advantage of the 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 349 

favourable conditions of existence artificially created by 
common exertion. Completed adaptation, then, is seen, 
on the one hand, in the alleviation of human existence 
in the midst of hostile nature, and, on the other, in 
the penalization of parasitism by the increased power of 
self-protection; so that the law of least eHort no longer 
compels the most powerful individuals necessarily to 
take recourse to parasitism. 

Thus we have obtained an exhaustive answer to the 
question of progress. The notion of progress has appli- 
cation and meaning only for humanity. There can be no 
progress in the universe. The eternity of the world, and 
the absence of any end from which such progress could 
acquire significance, exclude it. In an eternal universe 
human thought can only discern eternal motion in a 
cycle or cycles, of which all the periods ;oossess the same 
worth and significance. We cannot speak of progress 
within the solar and planetary system, or even in the 
orders of living creatures. There is no objective — that 
is to say, non-human — ground for assigning higher 
worth in the universe to a globe with a hard crust than 
to a drop of molten fluid, or less to a completely scorified 
and frozen orb than to our planet in its present or primi- 
tive condition. Were any difference to be made as be- 
tween such conditions, the primitive drop of molten fluid 
must rank above the stiff-crusted orb and the ball of 
ice, inasmuch as all the electric, chemical, and me- 
chanical properties of energy must undoubtedly have 
more powerful, free, and varied play in the form of 
drops than later, when, Its processes becoming slow, 
they cool off Into globes. Nor are we entitled to gen- 
eralize from the development of the unicellular organ- 



350 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

ism and apply to strongly differentiated plants and 
animals descriptive terms such as " advance " and 
" progress," which suggest a judgment of value. On 
the contrary, it could be very well maintained that the 
simplest living creatures are more perfect than the more 
complicated, because they are more capable of resistance 
to hostile environment, more successful in maintaining 
themselves, in spite of unfavourable circumstances, and 
are practically immortal, since, instead of dying of their 
own inherent weakness, they can only be destroyed by 
the chance action of some external power. With 
naively unconscious bias we have taken humanity and 
human life as our standard of value, and test the worth 
of all things, beings, and conditions by It. The more 
closely any being resembles man, the more favourable 
any condition is for human life, the higher is the value 
we assign to them, and we conceive of their end as lying 
In resemblance to man, becoming favourable to his exist- 
ence, and speak of development in that direction as 
progress. On such grounds we esteem the development 
of the planetary system from primary vapour, the cool- 
ing of the primary drop to form the habitable globe, the 
differentiation of the unicellule into mollusc, worm, 
vertebrate, warm-blooded animal, and mammal, as an 
advance In the scale, as a movement towards perfection, 
as progress. Such a view is based on an anthropo- 
morphic illusion which cannot stand against scientific 
criticism. 

Even within the human race progress Is hardly to be 
thought of as regards the fundamental characteristics of 
human nature and human life. Human memory is very 
far from perfect, and it has very probably become less 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 351 

powerful since it began to help itself out by means of 
writing. Nor has man become happier. On the con- 
trary, the preponderance of intellect over emotion causes 
him to create imaginary evils, and prevents him from 
enjoying the pleasures he possesses with the old reckless 
glee. Nor can man to-day be said to be better than his 
distant — even than his most distant — ancestors. He 
has only learned to conceal his selfishness and his un- 
sympathetic hardness towards his fellows or to disguise 
it as love of his kind. The point remains in which real 
progress is visible in the domain of will. The total 
energy of the human will has possibly not increased; it 
is certainly no longer displayed, as among barbarians, in 
violent ebb and flow, in the wild and sudden outbursts 
of extreme and transitory exaltation that give rise to 
deeds of heroism. But it Is regular, disciplined, and 
sustained, and therefore far more adapted for regular 
and productive employment than the wild, untamed 
force of primitive man. The one is like a canal that 
drives mill-wheels and supplies the driving-power of 
electric turbines ; the other is a mountain bum, that gen- 
erally trickles along in a tiny streamlet, or dries up alto- 
gether, but sometimes comes down with fury, tearing up 
rocks, and laying waste woods In its course. When the 
will Is thus disciplined, even If Its energy be not In- 
creased, It permits the attention to be concentrated and 
sustained, phenomena to be observed with more fruit- 
ful results, a further tracing of their causal connection, 
and anticipation of their consequences, judgments to be 
formed and conclusions reached of a more thoroughly 
logical kind. The result Is that the sense of reality be- 
comes more acute ; the Ideas cover a wider range, present 



352 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

and future; and knowledge is extended, while its basis 
becomes more secure. In the last resort knowledge as- 
sists man to establish himself more readily within the 
natural order, provide himself with more favourable 
conditions of existence, and satisfy his instinct of self- 
preservation more completely. Knowledge is thus 
adaptation on the intellectual side, and progress the 
return more and more to that relation to his environ- 
ment in which man found himself before the first 
Ice Age — a stage that may be called paradisical. In 
other words, progress is the artificial re-creation of the 
favourable conditions of life no longer provided 
by nature, and the extension of those conditions, not 
to favoured Individuals alone, but to the average 
man. 

Such a conclusion, such an answer, to the question 
of progress will, no doubt, be to many not only disap- 
pointing, but positively revolting. " What! " they will 
cry, " Is progress to result merely In returning us to 
that condition now enjoyed from birth on by every ani- 
mal and plant species that flourishes on the earth? 
Have hundreds of thousands of years of exertion 
brought us no more advantage than a share of the privi- 
leges of the smallest bacillus? Is this all we have at- 
tained through a knowledge that takes the universe for 
Its province, and tells us the secrets of the matter, con- 
dition, and movement of the first cosmic vapour; 
through all our discoveries, our Inventions — that we 
may live our little life and no more, and not live It so 
happily as did our remotest ancestors, who enjoyed a 
soft, warm air, that freed them from the need of shelter, 
fire, and clothing, and food that could be plucked from 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 353 

every tree? Is all this toil and labour to go for such 
a miserable end? Mere life cannot possibly be worth 
this huge, incessant expense of spirit! " 

The indignation of wounded self-esteem cannot do 
away with the humiliating truth. The objective worth 
of human life, from a superhuman point of view, we 
cannot know. To mankind it has hitherto always 
seemed a good of the highest value, although Schiller 
maintained the contrary, and may have been right in 
exceptional individual cases. Self-preservation has al- 
ways seemed the best use to which force and capacity 
could be put. Life feels itself as an end, and is satisfied 
therewith. Poets and thinkers have denied it. They 
have declared that some exertions are not worth while. 
Martial maintained that it was the greatest mistake 
" propter vitam vivendi perdere causus " — to lose the 
causes for living for the sake of life. He maintained, 
that is to say, that life has causes that lie outside and 
above it. Eighteen centuries later Georg Simmel ex- 
presses the same view when he finds the cause of the 
unrest, discontent, and vague yet painful longings of the 
present to lie in the fact that in the complexity of mod- 
ern civilization and the extent to which the division of 
labour has been carried the individual, divorced from 
the purpose or utility of his work, feels his existence 
to be empty and meaningless, and is discontented with 
his life and with himself. These are brilliant ideas that 
occur as one sits at one's desk. They are not drawn 
from contemplation of the spectacle of actual human 
life. The sense of life is pleasurable in itself, and af- 
fords In itself a satisfaction that Is sufficient stimulus 
to the living to cling to It at any price. Not until the 



354 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

tide of life in the organism begins to ebb, and the chem- 
ical and physical processes connected with life begin to 
circulate more slowly and less smoothly through the 
cells, does kinaesthesis cease to be pleasurable and begin 
to contain elements of positive pain, which overpower, 
and finally suppress, the others. Then, and only then, 
does the reason, stimulated by subconscious feelings of 
distress, begin to question the end of existence and the 
meaning of its own activity. 

To philosophize about the meaning and purpose of 
life, in so far as it is an inward impulse, and not mere 
imitation or intellectual gymnastic, is the sign of ill- 
humour or weakness, sickness or old age. A man in 
the plentitude of his strength, who has a good appetite 
for his meals several times a day, loves his wife passion- 
ately, and finds joy in his growing children, and pleasure 
in the opening buds of spring, never asks himself 
whether these feelings and impulses and their satisfac- 
tion make life worth living and justify its existence. He 
does not seek for any hidden meaning and purpose in 
life, but finds both completely satisfied in the immediate 
sensations of the moment. Even the incomprehensibility 
of organized labour in a civihzed community, and the 
intellectual nullity of the function performed by any 
individual under a far-reaching division of labour, does 
not spoil the temper of the worker, or fill him with pain- 
ful doubt as to purpose and worth of his existence. If 
Georg Simmel had studied popular wisdom, he would 
have come upon a French proverb : " II n'y a pas de sot 
metier, il n'y a que de sottes gens" — ^" There is no 
stupid trade, only stupid people." To the plain man 
every occupation seems right and rational which pro- 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 355 

vides him and his with bread and butter. So long as 
it be sufficiently lucrative, he does not trouble as to its 
significance to the community as a whole. Speculation 
as to the meaning and purpose of life is a function of 
the reason, while the instinct of life and the joy in 
life are feelings that arise and continue outside of the 
reason, and uninfluenced by it. 

The question as to the meaning and purpose of the 
life of man and of humanity belongs to the same order 
as the questions as to the meaning and purpose of the 
universe as a whole, and the origin, goal, and end of 
the world-processes, which give rise to fantastic ravings, 
but admit of no rational answer. So long as we keep 
our eyes fixed on reality, and, instead of running off 
after will-o'-the-wisps, submit to the guidance of facts, 
the conclusion is inevitably forced upon us that the 
one object of the endeavours of historic and prehistoric 
men has been self-preservation. They observed, investi- 
gated, thought, struggled towards knowledge, invented 
and discovered, in order that their lives might be safer, 
easier, and better, and they themselves obtain a larger 
share of pleasure. They founded States, organized so- 
cieties, created institutions, customs, habits, and laws, 
waged wars, conquered, and stirred up revolutions, in 
order at first to satisfy the needs of superior individuals 
fully, and with least trouble to themselves, by sacri- 
ficing to them the crowd of average persons, and, later. 
In order to confine the parasitism of these superior beings 
within ever-narrower limits, and to secure to the average 
man, to an even greater extent, the enjoyment of the 
fruits of his own labour. The self-preservation of hu- 
manity against hostile nature on the one hand, and the 



356 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

assimilation of the claims of the average and the su- 
perior individuals to the enjoyment of life within 
humanity on the other — this is the goal and object of 
progress. Those who have helped it on have always 
been engaged in some immediate concrete task. The 
vague search for a goal of progress, postulated to lie out- 
side of the existence of the species, belongs to dreams, 
not to knowledge, and those who have busied themselves 
with weaving this dream and dressing it out in beautiful 
language have had no share in progress. At best they 
are the musicians who accompany its course with 
rhythmic measures. 

Progress has always advanced in the same way 
throughout the course of human history. We have seen 
that it consists in a widening and deepening of knowl- 
edge. This is the work of the few. Civilization is de- 
veloped in the brains of exceptional men endowed with 
more than common powers of thought and will, keen 
and sustained attention, comprehensive consciousness, 
manifold associations, and an alert sense of reality — 
in a word, with unusual energy in the brain-cells. The 
causes that retard corporate advance in knowledge do 
not affect such men : they have no superstitious reverence 
for tradition, no hatred of the new as such. The world 
is more to them than books are; they listen to the voice 
of nature rather than to any teacher; and thus acquire 
from events and their connection perceptions that are 
new and personal. All the views, discoveries, and inven- 
tions that represent a better adaptation of the species 
to the natural conditions of its existence are their work. 
They are the true heroes of human history, not the six 
categories distinguished by Carlyle — the deified tribal 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 357 

patriarch, the prophet, poet, priest, man of letters, and 
king.^ Hero-worship directs itself to these categories, 
it is true, and not to the silent genius whose creation is 
for the most part accomplished in solitary obscurity, 
who is during his lifetime almost always misunder- 
stood. If not unknown, and who hardly ever sees his 
exertions bear fruit, so that he may have any share in 
the enjoyment of them. 

The definition given of great men by Carlyle in 
" Sartor Resartus " Is mere mystic talk. " They are the 
inspired (speaking and acting) texts of that Divine 
Book of Revelations, whereof a chapter Is completed 
from epoch to epoch, and by some named History." 
Vico ^ sees the truth much more accurately when he says, 
of the heroes : " They were in the highest degree rough, 
wild, of most limited intellect, but of vast Imagination 
and the most ardent passions, and as the result of these 
characteristics they must have been barbaric, cruel, 
harsh, wild, proud, difficult to manage, and obstinate in 
whatever they set before themselves." Current history 
Is for the most part confined to heroes of Vice's type, 
to whom Carlyle would likewise have accorded some 
measure of worship. They rivet the attention of con- 
temporaries, whose accounts transmit their wonder to 

^ Thomas Carlyle, " On Heroes and Hero Worship, and the Heroic 
in History," six lectures reported, with emendations and additions. 
Thomas Carlyle, " Sartor Resartus," London, Ward Lock and Co., 
p. 1 20. 

^ " Cinque libri di Giambattista Vico de' principj d'una scienza 
nuova d'intorno alia commune natura della nazioni," Second im- 
pression, Naples, 1730, p. 320: " Gli eroi . . . erano in sommo grado 
goffi, fieri, di cortissimo intendimento, di vastissime fantasie, di 
violentissime passioni ; per lo ettes que doveltei essere zotici, crudi, 
aspri, fieri, orgogliosi difficili ed ostinati ne'lor propositi." 



358 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

posterity. They provide the melodrama of history — 
wars, conquests, revolutions. To them is assigned the 
making of the map, the foundation, limitation, and 
alteration of States, and the origin of constitutions and 
laws. They are regarded as embodiments of the en- 
deavours and accomplishments of a nation or epoch. 
But behind these brilliant and boisterous figures are the 
students, engaged on the real, slow work of adaptation 
to which human existence is due. They are the edu- 
cators of mankind in Lessing's sense. The knowledge 
they acquire becomes common property of subsequent 
generations. In it the youth are brought up while they 
are still able to learn, before they are petrified in habits 
which resist everything new. The effect of this gradual 
extension of the circle of vision of the masses of people, 
who could never discover new truths for themselves, is 
that natural resources are better used and the worth of 
the individual increased. 

Mighty parasites do nothing for the extension of 
knowledge — that is, for progress. But their clear-eyed 
selfishness makes them appropriate all discoveries and 
inventions that can be of advantage to them by making 
it easier for them to exploit the weak. It is their part 
to translate the intellectual results of the students Into 
actual practical reality. They therefore endeavour to 
gain a monopoly of these results, but cannot prevent 
the use and knowledge of them spreading in the course 
of time. Thus, unconsciously, they are arming the weak 
against themselves, and making their exploitation more 
and more difficult for themselves, with the result that, 
within a measurable time, parasitism will become im- 
possible for all but the very strongest human types, for 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 359 

those of the most powerful will, greatest cunning and 
depravity. 

Humanity lives by its men of genius ; but they do not 
live by it. Humanity gives them no more than any 
other of its members, and incomparably less than it 
gives the exploiting parasite. It is natural that this 
should be felt to be somewhat unjust and ungrateful, but 
the sentiment — a simple religious reflex — arises from 
the same source as the primeval worship of the sun, the 
phallic ritual and the service of all the beneficial forces 
of nature. It makes no difference to the sun, which 
sustains all the life upon earth, whether or no we are 
grateful, the motive of our gratitude being partly the 
desire to keep it in a shining humour. It radiates light 
and warmth without knowing or intending it, and since 
it sacrifices nothing for us, we are under no moral obli- 
gation to be grateful. Creative genius does not discover 
or invent with the same unconsciousness as the sun, but 
any intention of giving happiness to the human race is 
as far from one as from the other. Consideration for 
humanity and the thought of benefiting it play no part 
in stimulating genius. When a new truth has been dis- 
covered, then, and not till then, this consideration may 
occur, on reflection. But the motive powers of that 
genius are those common to all men — need, whether 
higher or lower, that is to say, more or less generalized 
or differentiated; the desire for knowledge, which is 
a more powerful instrument in their hands than in those 
of the average man, and the demand for self-advan- 
tage and personal gain. He has no moral claim to the 
gratitude of others, and his reward is in the satisfaction 
inherent in the attainment of the goal he has set before 



36o THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

himself. And there is a further consideration : no man 
of genius creates by his own means alone. He is heir to 
the labour of the men of genius who have gone before 
him, without whom his existence would be impossible. 
He receives on his entry into life an inheritance which 
he puts out to interest and increases. Thus those who 
have advanced the human race form a spiritual family, 
and transmit their acquired knowledge from generation 
to generation. They form a special genealogical suc- 
cession, elevated above the average. They are, as it 
were, a species within the species, a human organism 
differentiated for a special function. All the compulsory 
institutions of State and society, created by Vico's 
" Eroi," to satisfy their own parasitic needs, form a 
framework into which every individual must fit, whether 
he will or no, if he be not strong enough to burst it or 
adapt it to his purposes. The imprisonment does not 
necessarily bring him into any closer relationship with 
those who share it. It is quite false to regard the ap- 
parent unity presented by a nation or species, as a result 
of this merely external pressure, as organic, as is 
done by Schaffle, Lilienthal, Gumplovicz, Durckheim, 
Worms, etc. Knowledge, on the other hand, does really 
unite the individuals who partake of it in an intellectual 
and moral bond. It gives to all without taking from 
any. It equips man for the struggle of existence, with 
an implement artificially adapted for the purpose, such 
as he could never have forged for himself, such as he 
could gain only by entrance to the community. Any 
individual member of a community that does not share 
in its acquired knowledge is like a blind or deaf man, 
or a fledgling without wings. He who does possess it 



THE QUESTION OF PROGRESS 361 

has inherited it, hke his physical stature and his inborn 
characteristics, from the generations who have gone 
before, with whom and with his fellow-men he is organ- 
ically related by its means. 

The effect of progress is thus apparently contradic- 
tory. On the one hand it renders the individual more 
independent and more capable of maintaining himself 
against his fellows; on the other hand, it unites individ- 
uals in a combination beneficial to them all, whose dis- 
solution would leave them less developed and less well 
equipped. Both effects are, however, but different 
aspects of a progressive adaptation to the given condi- 
tions of existence. 



CHAPTER IX 

ESCHATOLOGY 

The English saying, " Don't prophesy unless you 
know," affords a really exhaustive definition of the 
relation of human knowledge to the future. But so 
incessant and so strong is man's desire to penetrate the 
vast region of the unknown, that any visionary with the 
gift of words who plays the seer and indulges in absurd 
prophecies will find listeners ready to believe with all 
their souls. It was religion that first emphasized 
eschatology. It was, indeed, always its strongest at- 
traction, side by side with the protection that it claimed 
to afford against all the evils by which man was threat- 
ened. With the same audacious confidence with which 
it informed them of the final causes and destiny of the 
world, it revealed all the secrets of the future. The 
Kathaka-Upanishad relates that the Brahman Naciketas 
descended into the kingdom of the dead, in order, 
unmoved by all the promises of transitory felicity, to 
wrest from the God of Death the knowledge of what 
lies beyond the grave. ^ Buddhism teaches its followers 
that the world returns to nothingness, in order to rise 
out of nothingness to a new cycle of existence. The 
Zend Avesta describes the Paradise of Light which Is 

• Hermann Oldenberg, " Buddha : His Life, Teaching and Fol- 
lowers," Berlin, 1881, p. 57. 

362 



ESCHATOLOGY 363 

the eternal abode of the righteous. The rehglon of the 
Northern Germans is less optimistic: it envisages the 
conflagration of the world and the twilight of the Gods 
— that is to say, the fearful destruction of all that is. 
The prophets of Israel, instead of pointing to a here- 
after, give a sufficiently joyous picture of the future 
state of existence here, where the sword is made into 
a ploughshare, and the wolf and the lamb lie down 
together. Christianity prophesies the Last Judgment, 
the Resurrection of the Dead, and the kingdom of God 
upon earth. Islam promises to the faithful an eternal 
life, with all the pleasures of the flesh. The psycho- 
logical explanation of all these dreams is simple: they 
arise from a desire. The wish is father to these 
thoughts. Man is afraid of death. He would like to 
live in happiness for ever. This desire, in the imagina- 
tion of excited mystics, takes the form of a premonition, 
a vision, a promise, and religion authenticates it. 

Geologists, too, and astronomers have followed in the 
track of theologists on to the unsure ground of escha- 
tology. In doing so, they cease to be scientific, for in 
this field there are no certainties, only possibilities — or, 
at the best, probabilities. Most of them have prophe- 
sied that our planet will be turned to ice or to the 
scorified conditions of the moon, through the chemical 
combination of air and water; others that it will evap- 
orate through concussion with a heavenly body. In the 
once case humanity would be frozen to icicles, in the 
other it would flicker away as atoms — in each case its 
destiny would be accomplished; it would disappear, and 
leave no trace. Such a denouement to the human drama 
is not unlike the closing scene of the Voluspa. The 



364 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

spectators are sent disappointed away. What they 
want to know is not how humanity will come to an end. 
That its existence will terminate, as that of each in- 
dividual is doomed to do, they have no doubt. They 
have had to put up with this inevitable lot as best they 
may. What they would like to know clearly is the 
form that human life will take before its end is reached. 
They want exact and detailed information from those 
who undertake to unveil the future. How will the 
different States and peoples develop? Will Europe 
continue to rule the world, or will the sceptre pass to 
America, or even to Asia? What will happen to the 
positive rehgions, to the form and principles of law? 
What changes will be undergone by the hierarchy of 
class, the sense of beauty, the estimation and practice 
of arts and science ? Will the conceptions of good and 
evil, virtue and vice, honour and disgrace, alter, and 
how? What new Ideas will replace the old? What 
progress can be expected in the material sphere? What 
inventions and discoveries will come to make human life 
easier, richer, and more beautiful? 

None of the facts we know, none of the methods at 
present In existence, are adequate to give a definite 
answer to these definite questions. Any attempt at 
detailed forecast would be a mere ampHficatlon or con- 
tinuation of the prophecies of the monk of Lehnin or 
old Nostradamus. Scientifically It would be worth no 
more than the fortune-telling on All Hallows' Eve by 
means of tea or coffee-grounds. A general formula can, 
however, be laid down as regards technical progress, 
inventions, and discoveries, as the result of observation 
of the course of their development. 



ESCHATOLOGY 365 

Discoveries are the outcome of a fundamental psycho- 
logical trait — curiosity. It compels the observation of 
phenomena, and attention gives a new account of them. 
Chance is credited with an influence upon discovery. 
That influence is very limited. If a man happen to 
witness any process which makes no great impression on 
his senses, which he has never observed, which does 
not connect itself with a series of phenomena that are 
known to him, he does not notice it. He neglects it. 
Events that are noisy and remarkable, such as a furious 
storm, an earthquake, or volcanic eruption — any melo- 
dramatic aspect of nature — cannot remain unheeded. 
They force themselves upon the senses, and exercise a 
powerful coercion upon the attention. But man fails to 
observe the regular, silent operation of the chemical, 
physical, and biological laws, and they make no impres- 
sion on him until his intellect has been trained and his 
attention prepared to receive them. Consciousness per- 
ceives those sense Impressions only which it expects to 
receive, with which it is familiar, which will fit into a 
logically constructed system of Ideas; others pass over 
It without leaving any trace, unless their Impact Is of 
sufiicient force to compel the consciousness to build a 
new system to contain them. The world around him Is 
constantly addressing itself to man, and telling him all 
about itself, but he does not understand until he has 
learned its language word by word. Discoveries follow 
an Iron law of logical succession : no chance can turn 
them from the straight course. Each prepares the way 
for the next ; it premises the other. It was long known 
that prisms refract a white light, yet three-cornered 
glasses were used only to make a playful repetition of a 



366 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

little rainbow. Fraunhofer first noticed the black lines 
in the colours made by a sunbeam refracting through a 
prism. He noticed it because, being an optician, he 
had, in preparing optical instruments, more occasion 
for observation of the behaviour of light in a prism 
than anyone before him had had. His discovery of 
the black lines premised his knowledge of the prism 
and of refraction. Bunsen and Kirchofif found black, 
and later also coloured, lines in the spectrum of an 
ordinary flame in which certain substances had been 
burned, and found that these lines corresponded to 
definite burning substances. Thus arose the chemical 
analysis of the spectrum, which depended on Fraun- 
hofer's discovery of the black lines in the spectrum of 
the sun. Huggins observed, from a comparison of 
various spectra, that the lines of the same substance 
were shifted towards the violet end of the one spectrum. 
He remembered Doppler's principle, according to which 
one and the same set of tone-vibrations sound higher 
when the vibrating body is near, deeper when it is more 
remote; and, applying this principle to optics, he in- 
terpreted the shifting of the lines to one end of the 
spectrum to mean that the light was nearer, to the other 
that it was farther off, and was thus enabled, not only 
to establish, but to measure, the movements of the fixed 
stars. This astro-physical discovery was rendered pos- 
sible by the former discoveries of Bunsen, Kirchoff, and 
Fraunhofer, and by popular knowledge of the refraction 
of light by a prism. The history of every scientific 
discovery shows the same stages, from the crude per- 
ceptions of the natural man to an insight of such subtlety 
that the layman is for the most part unable to compre- 



ESCHATOLOGY 367 

hend how it has been arrived at, and how it Is possible 
to convey it unimpaired in such a manner as to carry 
irresistible conviction to everyone. Theories and hy- 
potheses are valuable as creating an expectant mental 
attitude, which directs the attention to the correspond- 
ing phenomena, and prepares it to perceive them when- 
ever they appear. On the other hand, they have the 
disadvantage of diverting the attention from those phe- 
nomena that do not correspond, and so far closing the 
consciousness to the facts that would prove the inac- 
curacy of the theories and hypotheses themselves. The 
phenomena that do not fit into the prevalent hypothesis, 
and therefore go unperceived, owing to the preposses- 
sion of those who believe in it, will first be seen and 
valued by the unprejudiced observer, whose attention is 
not governed by any hypothesis, and who, therefore, 
will be able to see the inaccuracy of the one which is 
accepted and the necessity of replacing it by another. 
For two generations all chemists were so full of the idea 
of Stahl's phlogiston that they did not see the con- 
tradictory facts operative on every side. After La- 
voisier's experiments, it became clear to everyone that 
phlogiston was an Imaginary quantity, and chemists 
could hardly understand how they had failed to see it 
to be so. 

It can be safely prophesied that man will not cease 
making discoveries, and that the number and importance 
of these discoveries will continually increase, since each 
of them prepares the way for new. But the nature of 
these discoveries cannot be foreseen by most acute 
students, even by those to whom the most important 
scientific results are due. When Helnrlch Gelssler In- 



368 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

vented his vacuum tubes, he could not foreshadow 
Crookes' discovery of the radiation of matter or 
Rontgen's discovery of the rays that bear his name. 
When the Curies obtained radium from pitch-blende, 
they had no idea that Gustav le Bon was to prove radio- 
activity a fundamental characteristic of that substance, 
and deduce therefrom such far-reaching consequences as 
its uninterrupted resolution into ether on the one hand, 
and its continual formation from ether on the other. 
When Galvani and Volta discovered electric contact, 
they had not the faintest conception that their experi- 
ments and results would lead, over and above practical 
inventions, to new views of the unity of energy and of 
the nature of matter. Certain discoveries, already 
dimly indicated, are, as a matter of fact, to-day nearly 
as good as made, since attention is turned to them, and 
is on the track of all the phenomena leading up to them. 
The transmutation of metals is only a question of time. 
The appearance of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, 
rotating round their planets in the opposite direction to 
that followed by all other moons, must surely before 
long give us an astronomical and cosmological truth that 
may well establish the theory of Kant and Laplace. 
But though their shadows of coming knowledge are 
clearly enough outlined to students of the subjects, they 
are wholly outside of the range of supposition of the 
living generation. It is, however, not only by the sum 
of knowledge already acquired that the way is prepared 
for new discoveries of increasing importance, but also 
by psychological constitution of the select few. The 
capacity for artificial attention develops progressively. 
The attitude of the consciousness becomes more and 



ESCHATOLOGY 369 

more critical; it is less and less easily satisfied with 
surface explanations and words that will not stand the 
test of reality. Observation and thought, freeing them- 
selves more and more from assumption, are less and less 
transcended by traditional authority. Hypotheses re- 
tain their heuristic value while losing their detrimental 
tendency to blind to certain aspects of a truth and 
suggest others. All this, however, is only true of the 
select few. The crowd is less and less capable of 
sharing the task of observation and the discoveries to 
which it gives rise, partly because it lacks the preliminary 
training, which becomes Increasingly arduous and 
lengthy, partly because Its curiosity about nature be- 
comes dulled. We have seen, as a fundamental attri- 
bute of all living things, this curiosity, which, in the 
course of development, rises to a thirst for knowledge 
and understanding. It Is their foremost weapon in the 
struggle for existence. It is thanks to It that It Is 
possible for any living thing to estabhsh Itself In Its 
environment and adapt itself to It — that Is to say, to 
avoid Its dangers, and profit by such favourable con- 
ditions as It affords. But It is long since man lived 
under natural conditions. The instinct of self-preser- 
vation, therefore, no longer compels him to direct his 
innate curiosity to his natural environment. Between 
him and It there stands society, of which he is an organ- 
ized part, and the institutions within whose framework 
his life Is set. Not his natural, but his human, en- 
vironment is important In the life of civilized man — at 
any rate, he Is far less conscious of the significance of 
nature In his existence than of the men with whom he 
lives and on whom he depends. His natural desire for 



370 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

knowledge is, therefore, directed to the phenomena of 
society rather than of nature, and therefore the average 
man is much more likely to increase sociological knowl- 
edge than any understanding of the world as a whole. 

Each discovery, besides being the mother of new dis- 
coveries, generally initiates practical inventions that 
simplify and enrich life. Discoveries are the fruit of 
the desire for knowledge that is ever active in the mind 
of man. Technical inventions, on the other hand, are 
stimulated by his needs. It is sometimes maintained 
that inventions create needs. This is mere talking in 
the air. An invention may give birth to new habits; 
it may develop and accentuate a need in many cases, 
but where no needs existed it creates none. Thanks to 
railways, many people travel nowadays who must other- 
wise have remained at home; but the desire to travel 
existed before the railway, although suppressed, except 
in cases of necessity, because it was extremely difficult 
to gratify. Gas and electricity have habituated us to a 
briUiant light unknown before. But the need for illu- 
mination at night existed even in the days of torches and 
oil-lamps, though it could be but poorly satisfied with 
the existing means. No inventor ever tried to construct 
a thing for which there was no desire. On the con- 
trary, inventive brains pondered over existing needs 
until they hit upon something which seemed to them to 
satisfy these needs better than anything hitherto known, 
or for the first time. Well-read people are very fond 
of rummaging through the authors of previous cen- 
turies for a more or less clear foreshadowing, or even 
an exact description, of various inventions not realized 
until many generations later. In the seventeenth cen- 



ESCHATOLOGY 371 

tury Cyrano de Bergerac gives directions for a flying- 
machine that contain the germs of the air-balloon as well 
as the kite. Almost two hundred years before him 
Leonardo da Vinci first studied the question of human 
flight, and arrived at solutions not very different from 
that of to-day. In the eighteenth century Legends 
Burgess of Miinchhausen describe how the sound in the 
post-horn had frozen up, and then thawed again, in 
which, if one has the mind, one may see a humorous 
suggestion of the phonograph. Galilei recounts, in his 
" Dialogue," ^ a pleasant tale of an inventor, who said 
he could transmit conversation between two people three 
thousand miles distant from one another by means of 
magnetic needles attuned in a certain way. May not 
this be an anticipation of the telephone? The answer 
is, No. This is no anticipation, no preparation for 
later inventions, but mere wish and desire — the mere 
expression of a need that has been felt, and for which 
the imagination weaves visionary gratifications before 
the reason sees any means of realizing them. Man is 

^ DIalogo di Galileo Galilei Linceo, matematico sopraordinario 
dello studio di Pisa, etc., dove nei contressi di quattro giornate 
si dircorre sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo, Tolemaico e 
Copernicano. In Fiorenza, Per Gio. Batista Landini, 1632, p. 88: 
" You remind me of someone who wanted to sell me the secret of 
conversing with someone two or three thousand miles away by means 
of a harmony between magnetic needles ('per via di certa simpatia 
di aghi calamtati! '). I replied that I would gladly purchase it, 
but would like to see it tried ; I should be satisfied with remaining 
in one room, while he was in another. He replied that the experiment 
could not be properly seen at such a short distance. Thereupon I 
dismissed him, with the remark that I could not very well go to 
Cairo or Moscow to see the experiment, but if he would go thither, T 
would gladly remain in Venice, and speak with him from there." 



372 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

conscious of longing for relief from some particular 
evil, or for the alteration of his condition generally. 
Above all, he would fain live for ever, freed from death 
and all sicknesses and infirmities. He would like to 
keep his youth for ever. He would like to acquire 
without exertion treasures and delights, the fulfilment 
of all his wishes. He would like to overcome all the 
limitations of matter, of the flesh, and of the senses; 
to be able to see, hear, speak, and feel, without regard 
to distance or any other obstacle ; to traverse seas, moun- 
tains, and continents in the twinkling of an eye, and 
annihilate space with the rapidity of thought. He 
would like all this, and because he would like it he has 
always invented fairy-tales, in which the wish is by 
some miracle realized. The idea of continued existence 
after death, the resurrection of the body, and the im- 
mortality of the soul, has arisen from the same human 
longing to which are due such inventions as the stories 
of the well of youth, the conjuring-stick, spells, the cap 
of darkness, the talisman that makes the body in- 
vulnerable, the cloak that enables one to fly through the 
air; which has inspired the legends of Daedalus and 
Icarus, of Albert the Great, of Raymond Lully, of the 
Count of St. Germain, and all the medieval wizards, 
coiners and devil's allies; which is expressed in the 
fantastic pictures of the future drawn by authors who 
imagine a time when men will fly, live under water, 
walk through mountains, see through walls and rocks, 
and talk with their fellows at the Antipodes. 

Human desire gives inventors their direction; it 
polarizes their thinking. Their consciousness is wholly 
devoted to the needs they feel. Every advance in 



ESCHATOLOGY 373 

knowledge must at once assist them in their search for 
the satisfaction of some old longing, a new and more 
highly differentiated impulse. They appropriate every 
scientific discovery as it is made, and endeavour to use 
it for the practical realization of what seemed im- 
possible dreams. On the other hand, they neglect dis- 
coveries that are unconnected with satisfaction of any 
human need, even though they may revolutionize the 
conception of the world. On the whole, research sees 
only what it is prepared to see, and tends generally to 
discover phenomena that conform to the stage of knowl- 
edge at the time, very seldom such as would reverse it. 
In the same way invention is confined almost exclusively 
within the range of needs, and hardly ever feels a 
temptation to contrive a novelty that supplies no felt 
want. Near Phaestus, in Crete, a slab of clay, i6 cen- 
timetres thick, was found, with more than 120 hiero- 
glyphics carved on either side.^ A stamp with these 
signs raised upon it must have been pressed into the 
soft clay, probably several times. In a word, printing 
— at least block-printing — had been invented in pre- 
historic Crete. The invention was, in fact, made when 
the first seal-ring, cylinder, or stone, was engraved from 
which an unlimited number of impressions could be 
obtained. Nevertheless, the invention lay disregarded 
for thousands of years. Why? Because there was no 
need for a rapid multiplication of writing and Images. 
There were too few educated people, too few able to 
read, and Intercourse was too diflicult for there to have 
been any need of reproductions. But when the need 

^ Communication of M. Salomon Reinach to the Academic des In- 
scriptions at Paris, Comptes Rendus, 1908, p. 478. 



374 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

for books arose, and the possibility of an extended 
market for them, the invention of printing followed — 
the development of a primitive thought and of a process 
that had been employed for three or four thousand 
years. 

Our knowledge of nature undoubtedly makes it pos- 
sible for us to-day to create many ingenious contrivances 
and implements, and transform energy in many ways of 
which no one has yet thought. But no one will think 
of them until a need arises and demands satisfaction. 
It is safe to assert that in the future, as in the past, 
technical Invention will be determined by the needs and 
desires, if not of all men, at least of a great number of 
men. Berthelot's prophecy that chemistry will succeed 
in concentrating in a tiny pill all the carbonaceous and 
nitrogenous matter needed by the human organism, and 
substituting it for all animal and vegetable food. Is cer- 
tainly false. The digestive canal, which extends from 
the mouth to the rectum, with all Its apparatus of 
nerves, glands, and muscles, Is designed to receive and 
assimilate animal and vegetable matter, and acts In 
man as a permanent cause of physical sensation. It Is 
the source of feelings of lively pleasure and pain, which 
are apprehended by the consciousness as needs. Ber- 
thelot's pill could never satisfy them, and that is why 
it will never be Invented, even as a freak, in any chemical 
laboratory. On the other hand, there can be no doubt 
that all the needs of which men are conscious will pro- 
duce Inventions to satisfy them in whole or part. Hugo 
Michel ^ has collected In his exceedingly Interesting little 

^ Hugo Michel, "Introduction to Invention: the Way of Wealth," 
Berlin, 1906. 



ESCHATOLOGY 375 

book 650 inventions for which a definite need exists to- 
day. Some are important, others insignificant — the 
flying-machine (section 75, Sport, Games, Aerial Navi- 
gation, and Public Entertainments) side by side with a 
"hygienic substitute for bread" (section 2, Baking), 
and " a transparent material for those taking sun-baths " 
(section 3, Clothing). The author is convinced that 
all these inventions will be realized within a measurable 
distance of time, and I share his conviction. But the 
needs which he leaves out of account are the oldest and 
most profound in human nature. He does not speak 
of the desire for eternal youth, eternal life, annihila- 
tion of time and space, control over all the forces of 
nature. It is a subject upon which the level-headed 
technologist does not enter. But one may venture to 
predict that this desire, too, will, to some extent, be 
fulfilled. Death cannot be got rid of, but life may 
be prolonged beyond the measure of to-day.^ Old age 
cannot be wholly obviated, but the limits of youth may 
be extended by many decades.^ Disease may be pre- 
vented and cured. Rapidity and security of intercourse 
may increase to such an extent that man will be in a 
sense ubiquitous in his planet. Air and water will pre- 
sent no obstacles. He will fly as he now drives, and 
travel under water as he now travels over it. He will 
learn to use natural forces that to-day do not obey, and 
even threaten him, and to provide himself with pleasures 
in all the quarters of the globe. All this will certainly 

* Jean Finot, " La Philosophic de la Longevite," Paris, 1900, p. 74. 

" Elie MetchnikoflF, " Etudes sur la nature humaine," Paris, 1903, 
chap. X., " Introduction a I'etude scientifique de la vieillesse," pp, 
294. et seq. See also p. 390. 



376 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

happen, because mankind desires it, and because the 
whole history of the development of civilization teaches 
that man has always been successful, if not in satisfying 
his needs completely, at least in getting as near that 
satisfaction as possible. 

So much may fairly be anticipated as to the future of 
invention and discovery. Certain cautious conclusions, 
too, may be ventured as to the general destiny of man- 
kind, so long as we avoid entering into any of the con- 
crete details that mark the course of history — wars, 
alliances, revolutions, class strife, and the rise and de- 
chne of particular States. No one can foresee and fore- 
tell when and where an Alexander the Great, Napoleon, 
or Bismarck will be born, a Battle of Marathon, Actium, 
Chalons, Hastings, Waterloo, Sadowa fought, a Polish 
kingdom destroyed and partitioned, an Italy created, an 
India acquired by England, or a Cuba lost by Spain. 
To historians such men and events seem of the greatest 
importance; they seem to them the real content of 
history. In reality, as I have tried to show, they have 
no real or permanent effect on the history of humanity. 
Whether a people groan under oppression or enjoy 
freedom, whether they are ill or wisely ruled, birth, love, 
and death go on with uninterrupted regularity, if in 
different ratios. Needs must be satisfied in a land 
under foreign dominion as well as in an independent 
one. Everywhere individuals and classes look after 
their own interests, so far as they are aware of them, 
with all the energy they possess; everywhere they be- 
come habituated to the ills they can bear or which it 
would cost them too great an effort to overcome, and 
rise with desperate resolution against them If they be- 



ESCHATOLOGY 377 

come unendurable. Waves rise and pass over the sur- 
face of humanity, sometimes merely ruffling it, some- 
times rising mountain high. One can watch a particular 
wave rising, arching, passing, sinking down again. But 
that it is not worth this interest, from the point of view 
either of knowledge or of the destiny of the species, is 
sufficiently evident to anyone with the smallest insight,, 
since it is no more than a particular instance of the 
universal law of wavehke movement. The rise and 
fall, eddies and whirlpools that agitate the surface, 
never penetrate fully to the depths below ; its mightiest 
convulsions leave them unmoved. Events that may, 
determine the destiny of individuals leave no trace on 
the hfe of the species of the whole. In human Hfe 
everything happens as a consequence of the mode of re- 
action to external influences, whether natural or human 
in the origin, which is determined by its organic struc- 
ture. Since the physical and psychic organism will not 
alter within a measurable distance of time, its behaviour 
will always conform to those same laws that have regu- 
lated it in the course of its history. One possibility 
must be left open : after ten thousand years the present 
climate of the earth may disappear, and be replaced by 
that prevailing when the human species first appeared. 
If, as then, the differences between the seasons were to 
disappear, the Ice to melt at the poles and in every 
glacier, eternal spring to smile even in the highest lati- 
tudes, and all over our planet animals and plants to 
enjoy tropical conditions, then a profound revolution 
must take place in the existence of man. He would 
cease to feel most of those needs whose satisfaction Is the 
main purpose of his exertions, such as clothing, dwell- 



378 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

ings, nourishment, and artificial warmth. Once more, 
as in the beginning, when he, like all other living things, 
was the spoilt child of nature, he could live and let live, 
free from toil and necessity. He would not, of course, 
even so, return to a condition of primitive barbarism; 
he would no longer be satisfied to vegetate like a satis- 
fied animal in a well-stored manger; his intellectual 
needs would remain, and probably, also, the habits ac- 
quired during his severe struggle for existence, among 
them being, no doubt, some tendency to parasitism and 
to the accumulation of wealth, however greatly modi- 
fied its form. Institutions and opinions would survive 
from the day of necessity to that of superfluity — arrange- 
ments which, though sensible and practical when origi- 
nated, would have neither meaning nor use under new 
conditions. Thrift and providence would still be es- 
teemed as virtues, although, with manna falling every 
day from heaven, they are an eccentricity, if not a vice. 
Altruism and citizenship would still be regarded as' 
moral sentiments, although they would have lost their 
purpose in a world where no one needed the help of his 
fellow. The strong, select few would still feel atavistic 
tendencies to rule and command, although there would 
no longer obtain any biological advantage by power 
over others. Gradually all these surviving traits would 
recede, and the primitive instincts atrophied in man 
would revive. The consciousness, enriched by an ample 
store of ideas, would acquire a tone of feeling entirely 
unlike that existing to-day. The State might not dis- 
solve, but its organization would relax. It would have 
nothing to defend, since there would be no inducement 
to deeds of violence. The competition for gain between 



ESCHATOLOGY 379 

individuals and for the possession of the earth between 
nations would cease: war and conquest would cease. 
If the ambitious still thirsted for renown, they would 
find it in the intellectual fields of art or science. There 
would be no political history: only natural history and 
biography. One danger, indeed, would still threaten 
a happiness that might seem without a cloud — that of 
overpopulation. Nature at its most luxuriant can only 
support a limited number of living things, and boundless 
demands exhaust her riches. Under primitive condi- 
tions the cure for this evil lies in incessant struggle and 
the extermination of the weak. A high civilization 
would probably prefer to estabhsh the balance between 
the provision made by nature and the demands of those 
who live upon her and maintain it by limiting of the 
ratio of children to parents. 

Short of the contingent return of the climate of 
Paradise, which, if the learned pundit's ^ remarlcable in- 
terpretation is correct, is clearly recalled in the Vedanta 
and Zend Avesta, history will always be what it has 
been since our knowledge of it — a dial whose hands are 
moved by the intellectual characteristics and powers of 
man. The stimuli determining human action are al- 
ways the same; the form that action takes varies with 
the knowledge and the instruments at its command. 
In the future, as in the past, men will be born unequal, 
but the distance between the select few and the average 
will constantly lessen. It is hardly conceivable that 
there should appear to-day in any nation belonging to 
the white race a man so much above his fellow-country- 

' Dr. George Biedenknapp, " The North Pole as the Home of a 
People," Jena, 1906. 



38o THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

men as were the mythical eponymous heroes of the past, 
who transformed the whole face of life by the civiliza- 
tion that they brought, by the knowledge of the enhght- 
enment they spread, and who, by making law, purifying 
morals, and establishing religion, left a different race 
of men from that which they found. In the future 
this will be even less possible. The time of demigods 
is over. The initiative to all social progress, all im- 
provement in laws, institutions, and morals, may pro- 
ceed from a single personality; but realization is the 
work of numerous groups. A single student may give 
to scientific discoveries their final elucidation, their suc- 
cessful form, but they are essentially the common work 
of generations of savants. Only the creations of art 
and poetry are purely individual achievements, and even 
here there are innumerable links between one work, one 
author, and the other, and every poet, every artist, will 
incorporate in his work the best that has been attained 
by his predecessors. 

The average and the select are brought nearer to- 
gether, not by the levelling down of the select, but by 
the levelling up of the average. The capacity for sus- 
tained attention develops. The consciousness, con- 
stantly extending its scope, is able to grasp a greater 
number of ideas at one and the same time. As a result, 
phenomena are more exactly observed, perceptions more 
accurately combined, and conclusions and judgments 
more correctly formed. In a word, the content of 
thought is more thoroughly real, there is less psittacism, 
less vagueness, less mysticism, less credulity, a more 
complete adaptation throughout to the given conditions 
of existence. Whether the association of ideas will be 



ESCHATOLOGY 381 

less stereotyped and the crowd therefore freed from 
the slavery of custom, and the hatred of all things new, 
cannot be foreseen. Experience, so far as it goes, teaches 
that highly civilized men, no less than savages, have 
great trouble in forming new thought combinations, and 
avoid it whenever they can. Civilized man is superior 
in knowledge and judgment to the savage, only because 
in his plastic and receptive childhood and youth a larger 
supply of valuable and varied material was available 
for his mind. His education over, he clings fiercely to 
what he has learned at school as does the savage to his 
scanty traditions, and reprobates the new as decidedly 
as he can do. 

It is at the most a difference of a generation. The 
distance between nations, like that between individuals, 
will diminish. It is questionable whether there is any 
difference in the capacity for development possessed by 
the different nations of the white races. If one appear 
to be behind the others in civilization, the fact may be 
a consequence of wars, bad government, or class oppres- 
sion. The more backward will, no doubt, make up on 
the more advanced so soon as the causes are removed 
that have checked their development. There has long 
been no difference in education and culture between the 
members of the upper classes of the different peoples of 
the white race. All are represented by first-rate achieve- 
ments in science, literature, and art, which show that 
individual genius exists in all. It Is less certain whether 
the different races are equally endowed. Many anthro- 
pologists, including those who are free from race 
fanaticism and a blind belief in the superiority of the 
Aryans, contest this, even In the case of the yellow race, 



382 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

which is the nearest to the white, and which, in the case 
of the Japanese, has given proofs of creative powers 
justifying the most brilliant forecasts. One fact re- 
mains. Hitherto the white race alone has by its own 
strength created that genuine civilization which can 
only rest upon knowledge. Chinese, Japanese, Indians, 
and Malays have attained to lofty heights in aesthetics 
and morals, but they have not scaled the highest peak 
of science. The civilization of America before Colum- 
bus may be comparable to the Asiatic, not to the Euro- 
pean. Negroes, Redskins, and Australians have not 
transcended the rudimentary civilization of the Neo- 
lithic Age in Europe. The savage races are no longer 
isolated. They have been violently brought into the 
vortex of universal intercourse. They must accept the 
whites as their teachers, whether they will or no. It 
remains to be seen what they will do in this hard school. 
If they cannot learn, they will disappear. If, on the 
other hand, they can assimilate the knowledge and 
judgments of the white, as has already been done by 
many Asiatics, some Redskins, and not a few Maoris 
and Hawaiians, we shall not long be able to speak of 
higher and lower races, and national pride will have to 
bend before the fact of the approximate equality of all 
peoples. 

I do not believe that all differences will disappear and 
all types amalgamate in a comprehensive uniformity. 
Among the commonplace faces, which will certainly be 
extraordinarily numerous, some characteristic counte- 
nances will always stand out. The perfection of the 
average will be accompanied by an ever richer differ- 
entiation, which will bring sufficient variety into the 



ESCHATOLOGY 383 

aspect of the world. But this differentiation will affect 
rather the subordinate details of life, and there will be 
much more conformity than now exists in its essentials — 
that is to say, the human race will approach the condi- 
tion of biological equilibrium. Great differences be- 
tween the individual members of any living species are 
always a consequence and a sign of some interruption 
of the natural course of its development. They prove 
that it has not yet reached its optimum. As the condi- 
tions of existence become more favourable, and tend to 
satisfy organic needs more fully, a greater individual 
uniformity appears. Originally the human species can 
have presented very few deviations from the main type, 
over and above the sub-orders or races into which it 
was from the first divided by skull formation, stature, 
and colour of the skin. But when its natural conditions 
were removed by the change of terrestrial climate, the 
hard struggle for existence began, and the supermen 
misused their superiority in an easy parasitism; then 
individual development began to strain in different 
directions : the more favoured rose, and the handicapped 
sank more and more. Thus the differences developed 
to which history testifies. Gradually that more perfect 
adaptation to the nature of our planet, which is the 
biological aspect of civilization, restored over a wide 
area the conditions under which the species first lived, 
and included in these conditions is a considerable meas- 
ure of individual uniformity — at least, within a single 
primitive race. 

The narrowing of the limits within which the varia- 
tion of the human type takes place has important social 
and economic results. If an increasing number of men 



384 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

become capable of sustained attention, and think by 
perceptions rather than by acoustic signs; if critical 
reason, the power of logical thought, and a sense of 
reality become common property, the exploitation of 
the weak by the strong becomes increasingly difficult, and 
at last almost impossible. The weak will protect them- 
selves against brute force by closer combination, and 
the cunning subterfuges of the parasite will lose their 
efficacy when the crowd has grown clear-sighted enough 
to see through them. When exploitation ceases to be a 
remunerative employment for the superman, all the ad- 
ministrative and social institutions, created and devel- 
oped in order to make that exploitation easy or possible, 
will gradually crumble away, and finally disappear, 
without the need of any violent revolution to destroy 
them. The form of the State will presumably endure, 
but It will receive a new content. Instead of being a 
soldier, it will be a judge, a teacher, an architect, and, 
to some extent, a policeman. In other words, the State 
will no longer regard it as its first function to maintain, 
against other nations, the collective egoism developed 
In its people, as the outcome of the individual egoism 
of a sovereign and his servants; to wrest advantages 
from other States by war, or the possibility of war, and 
to be armed against a similar undertaking on their part. 
War will become as impossible as Is to-day an officially 
organized attack on the part of a civilized State on the 
territory of a neighbouring State, for the sake of plun- 
dering and carrying off women and cattle. To a man 
like Count Moltke, steeped to the lips in feudal tradi- 
tion, eternal peace must appear " a dream, and not a 
beautiful one." But no one who can rise above his 



ESCHATOLOGY 385 

prejudices and normal habits of thought can doubt that 
war will fade to the horrible recollection of a barbaric 
past, when individual citizens are intelligent enough 
to comprehend that they could not conceivably be worse 
employed than in leaving their own trades and profes- 
sions, exposing their health and life to the most appall- 
ing dangers, in order, at no advantage to themselves, to 
destroy the life and goods of others, by way of con- 
vincing them of their own superiority. If no one de- 
sires to attack, no one need trouble about defence. The 
necessity of an army ceases, and with it all that pic- 
turesque child's play, the " colour of war " — that is to 
say, gay uniforms, shakos, stripes, and the less innocu- 
ous ideas connected with the colours, the position of the 
officer, and the duty of abject obedience. If there Is 
no army, diplomacy has no longer any function. A 
court of arbitration will decide such disputes as may 
arise between nations, respecting the regulation of com- 
mon rivers and the protection of migrating fishes and 
birds that travel from one country to another; an in- 
ternational authority, like the International Postal 
Bureau at Berne, will regulate the routes of the rail- 
ways of the world, postal and telegraphic communica- 
tion, common protection against epidemics, and the 
extradition of criminals. Nothing will be left for emis- 
saries and ambassadors to do, since the relations be- 
tween nations will be limited to the settlement of techni- 
cal points which, as concerning several States, and In- 
volving matters In which violence and passion have no 
place, must be settled by a conference of experts. 

The State will concentrate the energies of Its people 
on maintaining order and security at home, In grappling 



386 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

with such problems as ignorance, disease, and vice, which 
are beyond the capacity of individuals, and in carrying 
out public works of an extensive and costly character. 
The course of legal development will show considerable 
divergence from the Roman conception of property. 
The principle that no law may be retrospective will not 
be maintained as obstinately as it is at present. Ex- 
cessive fortunes will doubtless be attacked with search- 
ing questions as to their origin, and rules of equity 
framed with the greatest subtlety, so as to track the 
exploitation of the weak in all its most secret windings 
and retreats, to prevent it by penalties, and ruthlessly 
deprive those who exercise it of their gains. The pur- 
pose of pubhc instruction will not be to bring up a race 
of pious church-goers, submissive subjects, blindly obedi- 
ent soldiers, and patriots always ready to shout 
" Huzza ! " but to transmit to the rising generation the 
established results of the scientific labours of former 
generations, to develop their critical powers and their 
feeling for reality, and to raise them to a rational en- 
joyment of the beauties of nature and art. A genera- 
tion thus schooled will not lend itself readily to ex- 
ploitation by force or fraud. It will be intelligent 
enough to follow its money as it passes into the Ex- 
chequer, the Customs-house, the bank, and the joint- 
stock company, and see what happens to it. Taxes can 
no longer be squandered on a now superfluous army, 
nor on the fiscal beneficiaries and sinecurists, maintained 
because there is latent in the State of to-day the idea 
that it is really a brilliant and luxurious Court, whose 
dazzling dignitaries and host of superfluous courtiers 
serve to exalt the pomp of majesty. Protective duties, 



ESCHATOLOGY 387 

will be as impossible as trusts and cartels, since no one 
will be prepared to pay toll to individuals or groups in 
return for no corresponding services. Joint-stock com- 
panies will no longer gather in the money of small 
savers, and then manage it so that the largest possible 
share goes into the pockets of directors, agents, and 
other middlemen, and the profits of the rest first re- 
munerate the paid officials, many of whom are quite 
superfluous, and many overpaid, while the poor share- 
holders come last, and get a very modest share indeed. 
No one will part with the fruits of his labour except 
in return for the satisfaction of some need or an aesthetic 
pleasure. As the future darkens for the exploiter it 
brightens for every sort of art and talent. Positive 
religions have no place in a society in which the sense 
of reality is strongly developed and the wits of every 
man are sharpened against the parasite. They are 
doomed to destruction, however the present constitution 
of mankind may seem to contradict it. No man of sane 
intellect will continue to believe in their unproved 
dogmas or their twaddling transcendentalism. Their 
failure to induce the many to submit patiently to ex- 
ploitation will remove their value in the eyes of the 
parasitic class and the protection afforded them. No 
one will be inclined to pay for the support of priests 
when they are recognized on every side to be perfectly 
useless members of society. Public worship will be 
peacefully and naturally brought to an end by the State's 
dissolving its connection with the Churches, and leaving 
them to themselves. The chapels will be deserted; the 
clergy will fail to attract recruits, since no' young man 
with a faculty for work and study will wish tO' dedicate 



388 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

himself to a profession that neither insures him a live- 
lihood nor carries any respect with it. With the rapid 
extinction of the priesthood, the religion it serves will 
soon be a historical memory. The manner in which an 
enlightened humanity will satisfy the eternal necessity 
for exaltation, consolation, and the thought of eternity, 
I have tried to show in my sixth chapter. 

Although the select few will no longer be markedly 
above the average level, there will always be supermen, 
and they will, even In the future, feel the desire for 
power and domination over the many. But this atavis- 
tic desire to rule will no longer display itself in the 
historical and now-existing forms : it will no longer be 
directed to parasitism. It will breed neither con- 
querors nor dictators. No one will be able to think 
of setting a crown on his head and founding a dynasty. 
There may still be some attraction in the position of 
President or Minister in a community based upon equal 
citizen rights, but the attraction will not be very power- 
ful. In a matter-of-fact community, which eschews the 
adventurous and the capricious, and rewards its servants 
strictly according to the utility of their work, executive 
power will not afford any special satisfaction to pride, 
or even to vanity, Imagination, or bare greed. Ambi- 
tion must seek other fields and other ends. The strong, 
able, and superior man will always seek the first place 
within his circle — the leadership of a trade group, ad- 
ministrative body, political party, national assembly, 
or whatever it may be. He will attain it by oratorical 
gifts, wise counsel, success in business,, or determination 
of character, and find the reward of his exertions and 
capacity in the reputation, admiration, respect, and per- 



ESCHATOLOGY 389 

sonal influence that cannot be measured in terms of 
money. The exclusively moral nature of the prizes 
which ambition can hope to attain will exercise selection 
among the ambitious. Public recognition will be sought 
only by two classes — those who are eaten up by personal 
vanity and those in whom the social conscience is more 
than commonly developed. That thirst for power, 
however, which takes its rise in the consciousness of 
brute strength, in gross selfishness, or vulgar self-in- 
terest, and which is simply parasitic in its aim, must, if 
it cannot be refined or elevated, be suppressed as an 
evil propensity by a sustained exertion of the will, or 
else, finding an outlet in crime, It will be tracked down 
and exterminated by society. 

A humanity without adventures, wars or revolutions, 
without superstition or mysticism, without overweening 
and dazzling rulers and swarms of bhndly devoted ser- 
vants, an equal society of enlightened, educated, and 
intelligent human beings, who are all healthy and 
moderate, who all work, all attain a ripe old age, and 
all live orderly and contented lives, much in the same 
manner — such a humanity seems horribly tedious, and 
would certainly fill the romantic spirits of the present 
day with a desperate longing for barbarism In Its oldest 
and wildest forms. But the future only appears thus 
colourless and uniform because our eyes are accustomed 
to regard the present aspect of humanity as picturesque. 
The contrast between castle and cottage, luxury and 
destitution, triumphant exploitation and unreflecting sub- 
servience, is Interesting, and not repellent, to the man 
who regards it with the half-conscious idea of rising to 
an exercise of exploitation himself. Party strife, politi- 



390 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

cal intrigue, and diplomatic complications make history 
as exciting as a novel. Supermen can rise above the 
herd, an inspiring example to the vain and the self- 
seeking. But all the satisfactions that such a state of 
things suggests to the imagination are purchased by a 
great mass of human suffering, which it has been the 
incessant endeavour of humanity to remove or alleviate. 
Knowledge, as it widens and deepens, will reduce almost 
to a vanishing-point the evils that men impose on one 
another — evils which form the most horrible of their 
sufferings. The noble pleasure of art and science will 
become more general and more intense as the intellect 
and the nervous system become capable of more subtle 
enjoyment. Acute joy will be provided by the organic 
impulses and kinsstheses of youth, joy, love, health, and 
the sense of vigour, which must certainly be richer and 
more robust when man is free from care, and lives 
in the lap of luxury, than when he was always restless 
and often starving. The beauty of the future will be 
different from that of the present — ^more natural, more 
lofty, and more harmonious; and it certainly will not 
feel any privation in the want of the Sadie alloy of 
poverty and sorrow, sin and cruelty. 



CHAPTER X 

THE MEANING OF HISTORY— CONCLUSION 

I HAVE now reached the end of my inquiry, and it only 
remains to take a comprehensive survey of its results. 

The hundreds of thousands of volumes of written 
history that fill so many libraries may amuse the reader 
by the exciting adventures and varied careers that they 
describe: they do not contain the smallest amount of 
scientific knowledge. The historians describe events in 
a traditional order, and estimate them according to a 
subjective illusion, attracted by the unusual, and blind 
to the invisible processes — regular, permanent, and uni- 
versal — which are alone of real significance.^ When 
Claude Henri de St. Simon ^ says, " History down to the 
middle of the eighteenth century is only the biography 
of might," and Count Joseph de Maistre says, " For 

* E. Vacherot ("La science et la conscience," Paris, 1870, p. 92): 
" An epoch, a race, a nation, or a class, may be studied ... by con- 
sidering the actions and movements of great historic figures. . . . 
The picture is gloriously dramatic, and its aesthetic effect wonderful. 
But once the mutual connection and interdependence of events has 
been grasped . . . there is perceived, behind the superficial drama that 
occupies the front of the stage, at the back of the theatre, an action 
in progress which, though far less lively, brilliant, and exciting to 
the ordinary spectator, is infinitely more fascinating to the observer 
who seeks to penetrate behind the mystery of phenomena." 

^ Claude Henri de St. Simon, " Memoire sur la Science de Thomrae," 
Paris, 1857. 

391 



392 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

three centuries history has been an uninterrupted con- 
spiracy against the truth," they suggest limitations for 
which there is no foundation. Not only up to the 
middle of the eighteenth century was history merely the 
biography of might, it has been so since, and is so to this 
day, in spite of the chapters dealing with sociology and 
the development of moral ideas that historians nowadays 
amuse themselves by introducing into their works; not 
only for three centuries has it been an uninterrupted 
conspiracy against the truth, it has always been so, ever 
since the earliest chronicler sat him down to record the 
events within his knowledge, for the honour and glory 
of those whom he loved, reverenced, or feared, and the 
defamation of those whom he hated. History did not 
begin to be written until the most important and preg- 
nant period of human development was over, and even 
in the last five or six thousand years it includes but a 
small portion of events. Although the darkness of the 
past is but partially illuminated by it, it present^ such 
a connected picture as only the most lawless knowledge 
could justify.^ Even in the rare cases where such ex- 
ternal processes as are visible to the senses are recorded 
with tolerable accuracy, the real motive power is over- 

^ Professor Hugo Winckler, in a lecture read before the Asiatic 
Society in Berlin, November, 1906, gives the results of the ex- 
cavations at Boghazkoi, where Cheta, the capital of an empire of 
the same name, w^as discovered. Nothing is knov?n of Cheta, save 
that a Theban inscription mentions a treaty between its Emperor 
and Rameses III. But between 1500 and iioo B. c. this empire had, 
in all probability, a profound influence on Judsa and Israel, an in- 
fluence hitherto unsuspected by historians. In consequence, their in- 
terpretation of the history of Judaea has been imperfect, or even en- 
tirely false. 



THE MEANING OF HISTORY 393 

looked. This motive operates partly in the conscious- 
ness, partly in the subconsciousness, of the actors. In 
the latter case its workings are hidden from themselves, 
and even in the former they are inaccessible to the his- 
torian. When the historian undertakes to lay bare the 
spiritual foundations of events, he abandons the firm 
ground of reality, and soars into the airy regions of im- 
agination. Instead of recording and expounding, he 
invents, and pretends that his subjective interpretation, 
guess-work, and invention are the results of actual re- 
search. And yet the origin, nature, and reciprocal influ- 
ence of the elements of tradition on the one hand, and 
experience on the other, that compose the conscious and 
subconscious life, remain outside his ken, although to 
understand human action is impossible without such 
knowledge. But if, these objections apart, the his- 
torian's account is allowed to be always reliable, truth- 
ful, and complete; if we admit that he does give a cor- 
rect description of the men and actions concerned, does 
estimate correctly the share borne by each individual in 
any event, and does elucidate fully the motives and inten- 
tions of his action, even so his work, after all these 
admissions have been made, remains vain and neghgible, 
if considered as a contribution to knowledge. The pic- 
ture it presents displays the external form, but not the 
inner organs of humanity. Its attention is engrossed by 
the mutable forms of greatness, every one of which may 
be exchanged, replaced, increased, diminished, or sup- 
pressed, without any effect on the course of history as 
a whole. It is as though we were to ask a scientist to 
explain to us the chemical constituents and physical prop- 
erties of soapy water, and he, as the result of arduous 



394 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

labour, were only able to present us with an account 
of the number, size, form, colour, and duration of the 
soap-bubbles blown by a child at play. We are human, 
and everything human interests and moves us. Any 
vivid and convincing account of the destiny of a real 
human being rouses our eager sympathy, and will always 
find grateful readers. But history, as the " biography 
of might," can teach us nothing more than any other 
true account of an individual life: it makes us ac- 
quainted with a personality, while leaving us in pro- 
found ignorance of the fate of humanity and its eternal 
laws. Entertaining literature — nothing more — can be 
produced by a method of historical writing which re- 
gards the concrete event as essential, and treats it ac- 
cordingly, instead of penetrating through it to an under- 
standing of life of the species as a whole. When history 
ceases to recount, and begins to count — that is to say, 
when, instead of lingering over the visible individual 
bearers and makers of history — the picturesque soap- 
bubbles, as it were, of individual events — it devotes its 
attention to studying the forms, conditions, and modifica- 
tions of the uneventful daily existence of average 
humanity, then, and not till then, can it cease to 
be an art, a mongrel poetry, and rise to the rank of 
a science. But then it is no longer history in the cus- 
tomary sense : it becomes anthropology, ethnography, 
or sociology reinforced by biology, psychology, and 
statistics. 

The philosophy of history at least claims a higher 
point of view. It includes in its survey the whole course 
of human development, and seeks to know its origin, 
course, and goal. It values concrete personalities only 



THE MEANING OF HISTORY 395 

in so far as they seem to throw light upon the answer 
to the more general question. Such, at least, is its the- 
oretical programme. But we have seen how imperfectly 
it has hitherto been fulfilled. It is not in any spirit of 
interrogation, in any modest desire to learn what it can 
teach, that it approaches human life, but with the arro- 
gant spirit of command, and opinions already formed. 
These it seeks to have confirmed by question-begging 
inquiry and the suppression of any answers that do not 
fit in. Ernst Mach speaks somewhere of the " sciences 
of deceit, which have been formed for the purpose of 
maintaining views that are a survival of the primitive 
condition of mankind." The type of " these sciences of 
deceit " is the philosophy of history, in the customary 
aphoristic and deductive form, in which it includes every 
vision, every chimera, and every superstition character- 
istic of the theology and metaphysics of the day. It 
attributes intentions to the actions of historical person- 
ages which they never had, invents an order of events 
of its own creation, and ascribes a goal of human de- 
velopment that has no existence outside an imagination 
obsessed by anthropomorphic ideas. Were it possible 
for the a priori philosophy of history to reflect upon 
itself, and realize the real nature of the task before it, 
it would shrink back, appalled by the immensity of its 
undertaking and the inadequacy of its methods. The 
impulse in which it originates is a longing to compre- 
hend the riddle of the universe. Man seeks to know the 
significance of the universe and of his part in it — why 
he was born, why he suffers; why he must die; why he 
has been endowed with the awful privilege of reason, 
what will become of the heavenly spark housed in his 



396 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

perishing earthly body, why, in the brief span of his 
life upon earth, he aspires and struggles, thinks and 
inquires, loves, longs, and suffers. And, because his 
humanity is clipped in the limits of human existence, he 
naturally exaggerates the importance of his species in 
the universe. He thinks anthropomorphically, and fol- 
lows his will-o'-the-wisp, without any gleam of scientific 
mistrust, to the conviction that the meaning of the uni- 
verse must be revealed through humanity, if not through 
any individual human being. He believes ' that the 
species as a whole has a consciousness of its vocation that 
transcends the consciousness of the individual man, and 
that it is only necessary to take a sufficiently wide and 
penetrating survey of the life of the species to recognize 
its working and the end towards which it strives, and to 
be enlightened as to the nature of that task in which 
the individual is engaged without being aware of it. 
But the answer given by human history to such ques- 
tions of eternity is the same as that given by the history 
of every other species. We can get as near or nearer 
to a solution of the riddle of the universe by looking up 
to the starry heaven or down the shaft of a coal-mine 
as by the most impassioned study of archives and 
libraries. The search for a purpose in human events, 
and in the development of peoples and States, involves 
the silent assumption that history has such a purpose. 
It can only have a purpose if someone outside of human- 
ity, independently of the consciousness and open will, 
has set that purpose before it, and ceaselessly urges 
them to struggle towards it. This someone can only 
be a Being endowed with intelligence and will, omnipo- 
tent and eternal, and a Being with such attributes is the 



THE MEANING OF HISTORY 397 

God of the theologians. Whenever the philosophy of 
history includes a transcendental theology, it is a form 
of religion, and arrives by a superfluous historical circuit 
at the point of view of the catechism. Faith in God 
and His dominion on the earth does not require the 
support of history to strengthen its conviction of the 
being and attributes of God, and the stability of a world- 
order that came from God and returns to Him. And 
nothing in the course of history can create faith in God 
where it is absent. If the deductive philosophy of his- 
tory is not theology, it has no meaning; if it is, it is 
superfluous. 

When history is approached without preconceived 
opinions, in the sole desire to know; when its course is 
regarded with scientific detachment, and no theological 
assumptions are introduced, the resulting views have 
nothing in common with the teachings of philosophy 
of history in its customary form. 

No single historical event, when truthfully presented 
without any intentional interpolations, permits the 
assumption of a purpose towards which the efforts of 
historical actors are ignorantly directed, and which, re- 
maining unsuspected by their short-sighted simplicity, is 
first revealed to an astonished posterity. Nothing in his- 
tory justifies the assertion that any higher intelligence 
is pursuing plans in whose accomplishment unsuspecting 
humanity is a passive instrument. Nowhere is there 
revealed any transcendent Finality. On the contrary, 
every act carried through by men can be referred to a 
cause that is, as a rule, known, or, if unconscious, can 
easily be discovered. Causality, not teleology, is the 
law of history; a highly complex causality, certainly. 



398 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

which brings to bear upon every man, at every moment 
of his Hf e, the whole past and present of our species : the 
present by the necessities of the struggle for existence, 
and by the relations between stronger and weaker, 
fellow-workers and competitors; the past by means of 
the institutions it has created, inherited modes of 
thought, standards of value, and forms of feeling. If 
the causes of all human action be reduced to their sim- 
plest terms, it would finally appear that the will of any 
individual is determined solely by the needs that appear 
in the consciousness as feelings of pain. As long as 
he lives man seeks to escape pain, and all his efforts are 
directed to this one purpose. This highly generalized 
psychological formula is unconditionally valid in every 
instance, even where a man appears to do something 
that, instead of removing or alleviating a pain, actually 
causes him pain in the first instance. In such cases he 
takes one pain to avoid another, that seems to him 
more severe, however it may be estimated by the out- 
sider, who is exempt from it. A slave will work for 
his master till he drops down with fatigue, without any 
hope of reward or freedom, because the idea of the 
punishment for disobedience — stripes, mutilation, or 
even death — is more painful to him than the toil of 
work, by which he escapes from it. The peaceful man 
who loves his wife will go to war and run into the most 
deadly peril, because disobedience to the command of 
the State, failure to answer the call of patriotism and 
honour, are to him evils more dreadful than death. The 
habit of submission to traditional notions of duty and 
virtue has been made, by education, so much a. part of 
the intellectual mechanism of the civilized man, and 



THE MEANING OF HISTORY 399 

controls his thoughts and feelings so completely, that 
any deviation from it would cause him such unendura- 
ble pain that wounds and death would seem a lesser 
evil in comparison, A mere desire for pleasure is not 
the cause of action unless it be so violent as to be felt 
as a tormenting restlessness, excitement, and longing — 
that is, as a sharp feeling of pain. It cannot even be 
said that man is so constituted organically that he is 
only stirred to action by the desire for sugar or the 
fear of the whip. Really, the whip is the sole stimulus ; 
the sugar only becomes one when it stirs a desire that 
is so strong that it acts as a whip. Only on such an 
interpretation can either Hedonism or Eudaemonism 
claim to afford an accurate explanation of human action. 
Man is not always seeking the blue bird of happiness. 
He is always fleeing from pain. He does not set his 
footsteps towards a visionary Jerusalem — ^the fulfilment 
of the joy and happiness he desires so ardently. He 
flees ever from haunts of pain. 

Every historical event, without any exception, can be 
referred to a need — that is, in the last resort, to a feel- 
ing of pain. The purpose of these feelings of discom- 
fort is the preservation of life, and they are incompre- 
hensible without the assumption of a life force, a desire, 
inherent in every living thing, to maintain itself against 
destruction and annihilation. Only the assumption of 
a life force explains why the living creature marks with 
pain every perception of a state that could harm or 
endanger it, and Is thereby impelled to exert himself to 
escape It. It Is not quite correct to say that harms are 
marked by pain, for that gives the appearance of a 
duality, a separation pf the perception and the pain; a 



400 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

relation as between cause and effect, the thing accom- 
panied and the accompaniment. As a matter of fact, 
the perception of harm and the pain are identical. They 
are a single organic state. Pain Is the subjective side 
of harm. Harm is not the cause of pain : it is pain. It 
appears as pain in the consciousness, and operates in it 
to cause acts of will directed to protection; outside of 
it to cause reflex action. And as everything harmful to 
life appears in the consciousness as pain itself, so the 
unharmed movement of life appears in the conscious- 
ness as pleasure in itself, in reality as the only pleasure 
of which man is capable, and which he knows — a pain 
that may vary in intensity but not in nature. So we 
arrive at the knowledge that all the actions of men, 
whether individually or in groups, classes, and nations, 
are defensive of pleasure — that is, of life — and pro- 
tective against pain — that is, dangers and harms to life 
— and that the whole course of history is the expression 
of one underlying fact — the will of man and of man- 
kind to live and to make every exertion to maintain life 
in the midst of hostile nature. This does not distin- 
guish man from other living things — the lowest and 
the highest, the vegetable and the animal. Every organ- 
ism desires to last, and defends itself against destruc- 
tion with all the strength that in it is. The life force 
is seemingly inseparable from life, and the whole activity 
of every living thing is directed to the satisfaction of 
its necessities, which in the lowest stage are tropisms, 
conditioned by chemical and physical laws, and, with 
a higher development, are consciously realized as needs. 
History, rightly seen and interpreted, instead of sep- 
arating the human species from the chain of all other 



THE MEANING OF HISTORY 461 

living species on the earth, knits them all together, and 
proves in its own way the unity of all life. 

It has become more difficult for the human species to 
satisfy its needs than for any that lived on earth before 
it, or lives there now beside it. It arose between two 
Ice Ages, at a time when our planet offered from pole 
to pole the most favourable conditions of existence for 
a race of beings who lived on plants, were almost or 
quite hairless, needed the sun and disliked the wet, and 
followed a happy course of development in its tropical 
or subtropical paradises, until a subsequent Ice Age 
came upon it — not upon it alone, but upon all then living 
things. Many animal and plant species perished; others 
withdrew to a narrow tropical zone, and remained there, 
forfeiting their lives if they left their prison. Others 
struggled against the new hostility of nature, and 
adapted themselves to its harsh conditions. Of these 
was the human race. Instead of fading away before 
the frozen breath of the murderous climate of the Pole, 
or fleeing for refuge to a tropical region to which no 
cold could penetrate, it adapted itself to altered circum- 
stances — not, like the other dwellers on the earth, by 
organic changes, but by the capacity of its mind to invent 
artificial arrangements, which procured for it those con- 
ditions of existence no longer provided by nature. 

This artificial adaptation by means of discoveries has 
never ceased. The longer it lasts, the more energetic 
and effective does it become. It is the real content of 
human history, not visible on the surface, but occupying 
the depths. It has always been carried on according 
to the law of least effort, and has therefore always 
moved along the line of least resistance. This method 



402 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

produced one peculiar result. The stronger individuals 
caused the weaker to provide them with the favourable 
conditions of existence indispensable to them. The re- 
sistance of their fellows was less in proportion than the 
resistance of nature. Less effort was involved in rob- 
bing men of the fruits of their labour than in wresting 
from nature warmth, dryness, nourishment, and com- 
fortable rest. Parasitism proved by experience to be the 
easiest form of adaptation. As far back as historical 
tradition goes the strong are found directing their efforts 
in this manner. This parasitism on the part of the 
strong is the object — obvious or occult, direct or indirect 
— of almost all the institutions that have arisen in the 
course of centuries, and represent the framework, even 
the substance, of civilization. Superior Individuals 
always devoted their best efforts to the direct exploita- 
tion of those less highly gifted of the average people, 
and also to their education in habits of thought and 
feeling which would lead them not only to see no 
violence or injustice in the parasitism to which they 
were subjected, but even to feel themselves so distin- 
guished by it that they worked with heart and soul for 
those that exploited them, and felt a moral glow, a sense 
of pride, in being permitted to sacrifice themselves. It 
was with positive pleasure that they placed all their 
capacities at the service of these plunderers, and com- 
peted with one another to make Inventions and discov- 
eries with a view to their advantage. Thus, by the 
exercise of their own brains, they made their exploita- 
tion easier, less dangerous, more effective and pro- 
ductive. The only return, at first hoped and longed 
for, then besought, and finally demanded, by the aver- 



THE MEANING OF HISTORY 403 

age from the super man was to be left undisturbed in 
his habits, and not to be expected to form any per- 
sonal judgments or resolutions, any new adaptations, 
such as were beyond his power. He asked for 
the maintenance of order about him, and protection 
for his enjoyment of the few rights left him by the 
State. 

Externally, then, history is a melodrama on the theme 
of parasitism, characterized by scenes that are exciting 
or dull, as the case may be, and many a sudden stage- 
trick. A strong man, called a hero by the weak, who 
slavishly admire him, snatches dominion over some or 
many — perhaps over a whole nation or nations. He or 
his successors extend this power by means of raids into 
foreign territory and by conquests, and endeavour by 
the splendour of the court and occasional wars to main- 
tain their position by rousing fear and awe. The war- 
riors and servants of the ruler form a class apart, which 
endeavours, in its turn, to secure the privilege of ex- 
ploiting the rest of the people. If this class presses its 
claims too far, or if any section of the exploited popu- 
lation develops a strong economic position, then, when 
this latter section becomes conscious of Its strength, It 
will endeavour to break the power of the others, to cast 
them down from their privileged position, and occupy It 
In their stead, unless they are clever enough to take into 
their own ranks those whose attack they can no longer 
resist. In this, incessant warfare between individuals 
for the supreme power, between classes for internal 
domination, and between nations for the possession of 
the earth and its fruits, the State, Government, trade, 
industry, and law take their rise and perfect themselves, 



404 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

each the outcome of the other, each conditioned by the 
other, and all serving but as weapons in the warfare. 
But while wars and treaties, revolution and reaction, 
party strife, crisis, and compromise, are the character- 
istic expression of the efforts made by the parasitic self- 
ishness of individuals and communities to attain the most 
effective possible form of exploitation, and of the re- 
sistance offered by those who are sacrificed to them, 
the constant changes they effect are changes on the sur- 
face. Beneath the turbulent waves of the internal and 
external politics of States, the laborious task of adapta- 
tion is always going on, quietly and regularly, by means 
of a more and more penetrating knowledge of nature, 
which is of advantage to the species as a whole, includ- 
ing the average man, and also those who are handi- 
capped by nature. In this it Is unlike the easy adapta- 
tion carried out by the strong, for the advantage of 
a select few specially favoured organisms, by means of 
parasitism. The discoveries of keen observers and capa- 
ble interpreters permit a more and more penetrating 
insight into the operations, if not into the nature, of 
the forces of the universe. Able or intelligent inventors 
incorporate each new piece of knowledge in a form in 
which it can be of use in satisfying the needs of which 
humanity, or a portion of it, has become conscious. 
Better understanding of nature gradually educates the 
human mind, teaches it to distinguish error from truth, 
to think logically, to form judgments by careful com- 
bination of cause and effect, strengthens the attention, 
develops the sense of reality, and limits man's tendency 
to prefer words to views and Ideas of his own. When 
the reason is thus educated by a knowledge of nature, 



THE MEANING OF HISTORY 405 

the power of symbols and phrases over It is at an end. 
Men lose their superstitious belief in portentous formulae 
and signs; they test the accuracy of assertions made 
to them, and estimate threats by the degree to which 
they are capable of being realized. All this makes their 
exploitation more difficult. It can no longer be accom- 
plished by force, since the average people, when com- 
bined, are fully competent to forecast and meet strength 
by strength. It cannot be accomplished by craft, since 
the average people are capable of seeing through it. 
Parasitism, becoming more troublesome and less pro- 
ductive with every advance in the enlightenment of the 
crowd, ceases to offer to the select few the easiest method 
of adaptation. Then the law of least effort determines 
them to make the same efforts as the average persons 
do in order to obtain the satisfaction of their needs, 
whether from nature or by exchange with their fellows 
■ — an exchange more profitable in their case, thanks to 
their superiority. This development of civilization is 
paralleled by the development of morality. Moral con- 
ceptions undergo transformation with the change in the 
relation between the select few and the average many, 
with the rising self-respect of the ordinary man who does 
not aspire to domination, and with the increased value 
assigned to personality, even in the case of him not 
specially endowed. The ethics of parasitism, whose 
standard of value, as applied to thought and actions, is 
their tendency to be beneficial or detrimental to those 
engaged In exploitation, to the men of overwhelming 
force, to the privileged class, to the State, are gradually 
ousted, and their place taken by the ethics of sovereign 
personality, for which good is that which assists the con- 



4o6 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

quest of nature by man, and evil that which assists the 
conquest of man by man. 

Parasitism is not the sole result of the law of least 
effort in the struggle for existence in the midst of hostile 
nature: it has also produced illusion. No living form 
can preserve itself unless it is at home in nature, and 
learns to avoid what is harmful, and discover what is 
advantageous to it there. The development and dif- 
ferentiation of its organs is relative to this capacity. In 
proportion as its needs are manifold and complex, it 
must have a delicate and many-sided faculty of orienta- 
tion. In men, as in all other animals, the seat of this 
faculty is the nervous system, with the brain as its 
centre. The chemistry of the body and its movements, 
and, to a large extent, its development, circulation, and 
nutrition, are also controlled by this supremely impor- 
tant organ, whose highest function — the psychic — has 
arisen and been developed throughout by the necessity 
of self-preservation. Compulsory adaptation to nature 
strengthened memory, the primitive characteristic of 
living matter, fixed the attention; created and perpetu- 
ated the mechanism of the association of ideas; and 
imposed the law of causality on thought. The functions 
of attention, the association of Ideas and causal think- 
ing, are obviously determined by one and the same ob- 
ject : to translate the sense Impressions, when perceived. 
Into ideas and judgments In such a manner that the con- 
sciousness should receive with all possible speed and 
the least possible exertion as accurate a picture as possi- 
ble of its environment, should form as correct as possible 
a concept of the connection of phenomena, and foresee 
with the greatest possible certainty the changes, near 



THE MEANING OF HISTORY 407 

and remote, likely to occur and prove In any way impor- 
tant to the organism ; so that, estimating their value, 
both qualitative and quantitative, it may focus the organ- 
ism in the most favourable possible way. To form a 
picture of the universe, as closely in touch with reality 
as the formation and functioning of the sense and per- 
ceptive organs permit, is a psychic task of the most 
laborious description: knowledge is only acquired by 
arduous effort. It Is Incomparably less difficult to give 
full rein to the Imagination, to allow the thoughts to 
wander at will, as free and light as air, to Indulge In 
reveries and day-dreams, than to sustain and fix the 
attention, form Ideas from pure perception, without any 
subjective Interpolation whatsoever; gather up from the 
memory the perceptions already formed into Ideas, and 
to build up judgments from them ; finally to test with due 
severity the causal connection and mutual Interdepend- 
ence of the terms of every conclusion. The associations 
that are frequent and habitual organize themselves, and 
summon each other automatically Into the conscious- 
ness. It Is filled with a whirling crowd of Ideas that are 
drawn from the memory by the playful mechanism of 
the organized associations. Instead of being composed 
of Immediate perceptions which have been tested. These 
Ideas, then, group and combine kaleldoscopically. They 
dart like will-o'-the-wisps through the consciousness, and 
disappear again Into obscurity. And all this takes place 
without the will at any moment intervening to control 
the vanishing dance, or to introduce any order Into It, 
and without the thinking Ego being conscious of any 
sort of effort. Out of these nebulous elements, which 
never develop to rational thoughts, the dominant emo- 



4o8 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

tion of the moment creates subjective images like the 
figures of Chladni formed by the vibrations that act 
upon thin plates of glass — images whose origin prevents 
them from corresponding in any way to reality. Yet 
at the beginning of civilization, and even to-day in many 
cases, men were satisfied to use their brains in this way, 
because it required so much less effort than the way to 
knowledge. The automatic play of association gave 
them a view of the world that, though false in every 
feature, gave them pleasure because it harmonized with 
their feelings and inclinations. " Side by side with the 
real world," said Goethe, "there is a world of illusion 
more powerful than it is, and in it dwell the majority 
of men." Men built up this world of illusion for them- 
selves first by means of incomplete, inattentive observa- 
tion, which was satisfied with the most casual sense im- 
pressions, and falsified even them by arbitrary inter- 
polations and preposterous interpretations; then by pre- 
sentment or intuition, which is no more than a formless 
mjjddle of vague recollections, whose origin in the senses 
Is forgotten ; by the use of analogy in identifying things 
which are essentially different because of certain partial 
resemblances; and by imagination, which, working by 
means of automatic associationism, has emancipated 
itself almost completely from the law of causality. 

In this world of illusion men were as comfortable as 
in the warm huts inside which the cold, storm, and rain 
without went unobserved. There everything had a 
rational meaning. There they found the answer to all 
the questions suggested by fear or curiosity — an assuage- 
ment for all trouble and unrest, a comfort for every 
sorrow, a solution to every riddle. Sickness? The 



THE MEANING OF HISTORY 409 

tormenting of an invisible, sometimes of a visible, enemy, 
who only had to be driven or cajoled away, and one 
would be well. Death? A mere appearance, the reality 
being eternal life in unknown but, for the good and 
favoured, most glorious regions. The world? Around 
plate resting upon the sea, covered with a bell-glass of 
blue crystal. Its origin? its end? Great artists, the 
Gods, have created it, rule over it, and will one day 
destroy it. Happiness? A gift that can be obtained 
from these Gods, if one can win or purchase their 
favour by submissive prayer and sacrifices. These exam- 
ples suffice. For an exhaustive description of the world 
of illusion with which men have surrounded themselves, 
one would have to take in the whole range of mythol- 
ogy, all fabulous cosmogonies, theology, and also all 
metaphysical systems. 

In the long-run, however, Illusionism was no more 
successful as a means of adaptation than Parasitism. 
The cold blast of reality pierced the world of illusion, 
and laid waste its fair order. Magic formulas, incanta- 
tions, and the burning of witches and wizards, did not 
heal disease. Too often prayer and sacrifice failed to 
avert evil from individuals and communities. Amulets 
did not avail in battle to avert the deadly stroke. " Sator 
areto tenet opera rotas " did not succeed in extinguish- 
ing conflagrations. No incantations were of any use 
against plague and famine. The nullity of all the meth- 
ods of illusion inexorably compelled men to seek else- 
where. Its explanations had to be abandoned in the 
face of innumerable phenomena that could not be over- 
looked. In fear and trembling, at first isolated individ- 
uals, then more and more, were compelled by their sense 



410 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

of reality to come out of their cherished world of illu- 
sion, and feel their way carefully, slowly, step by step, 
into the real world. It was trackless and incompre- 
hensible, with sharp corners everywhere that bruised the 
feet, blocks and crevasses over which they fell. But 
gradually they began to learn their way about, and, so 
soon as some sort of path was made, the explorers had 
fairly solid ground under their feet. And those who 
studied the real world arrived at positive results, such 
as the world of illusion never had, and never could 
have afforded. The vast majority continued to be 
wrapped up in the illusions of their own weaving that 
they held for the real world. Nothing shielded them 
from the danger of losing all touch with the world of 
reality, and being exposed defenceless to the injustice 
of nature, like the dreamers and sleepers on whom the 
enemy descends in the night, except the incessant watch- 
fulness of the sentries who undertook to guard and to 
defend them. These were the small minority, those 
who busied themselves with observation, research, re- 
flection, and experiment. To them the world owes its 
discoveries, its inventions, and its knowledge. Thanks 
to the devoted labours of this minority, the great ma- 
jority could safely prolong their pleasant sojourn in 
the land of illusion, though they are more and more 
effectually being prevented from acting under the sway 
of their illusions, and repeating, on a larger scale, such 
aberrations as the Crusades, the flagellation movement, 
the persecution of heretics, and burning of witches, or 
the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries. 

But even the apostle of reality has not wholly re- 



THE MEANING OF HISTORY 411 

nounced his Illusions. Even the scientist, accustomed to 
observe most carefully and test most severely the con- 
tents of his consciousness^ — even he feels an atavistic 
home-sickness for the world of illusion, and is drawn 
towards it by irresistible longing. But there is this dif- 
ference between him and the man who has never awak- 
ened to his illusions : he knows the play of his imagina- 
tion for what it is, even while he delights in it, and never 
for a moment confuses it with real ideas and judgments. 
The world of illusion, that the undeveloped mind re- 
gards as the whole world, is restricted by the critical 
thinker to the sphere of art, which is to him a joy and 
a luxury with which he cannot dispense. In art he recov- 
ers that free play of the imagination that, until recent 
times, formed the sole activity of the human brain. 
Once more, untrammelled by the harsh negations of 
reality, he is master of a world which he can build up, 
and furnish with his own ideas, peopling it with the 
embodiments of his longing for beauty, youth, strength, 
and every kind of perfection, banishing from it every- 
thing hateful and vulgar, everything evil, repulsive, or 
repellent, all pain and all sorrow, and committing its 
government to justice, gentleness, and love. Art is gov- 
erned by man's inclinations and impulses, which find 
there the unbounded satisfaction denied them In reality. 
There man Is not obliged to adapt himself with pain and 
trouble to nature; instead, nature — a nature of his own 
invention — adapts Itself to all his needs and whims, and 
leaves no one of his wishes unfulfilled. The matter-of- 
fact necessity of adapting himself to his environment 
has compelled man to raise his thought to knowledge 
by submitting it to stern discipline, and to renounce the 



412 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

pleasures of illusion, which, though facile and flatter- 
ing, are sterile. In art he seeks his revenge on reality. 
An answer to the questions of eternity has been hoped 
for from history. In vain: it contains none. The 
moving picture of human life, present as well as past, 
holds up to us the same inexplicable facts as does the 
universe itself. These facts are the very existence of 
the world, the phenomenon of life and consciousness. 
They are given: we must accept and make the best of 
them, whether we comprehend them, whether we give 
a rational explanation of them or no. We see that the 
world exists; that at a given moment in the world our 
planet arose, and became the stage of the life-process; 
that in the course of the development of life upon earth 
a being appeared with a relatively larger brain than any 
hitherto known, man; that the human species has the 
desire and the capacity to maintain itself under very 
unfavourable circumstances. So much we see. But 
history can no more explain it than chemistry or 
astronomy. How was consciousness all at once ignited 
by the combination of matter, and how did it develop 
itself steadily to knowledge? How are the influences 
of nature on living matter — i.e., energy, movement, 
oscillation — translated into idea? Why has man and 
no other living species on the earth attained to intel- 
lectual development? To what purpose is this long 
series of birth and death, the vast effort involved In 
the attainment of knowledge, ceaseless struggles and 
sorrows, if annihilation, the disappearance without a 
trace of humanity, and perhaps of the earth itself, be 
the end of it all? It is vain to ponder the annals of 
mankind, and summon up, so far as we are able, men 



THE MEANING OF HISTORY 413 

and events from the vasty deeps of past centuries. We 
can obtain no light on what we long to know. 

We must cease to regard humanity from the point of 
view of eternity. It dwindles else before our eyes to 
an almost invisible speck, without permanence, signifi- 
cance, or aim, the contemplation of which leaves us 
utterly humiliated, broken, and dispirited. " Sub specie 
aeternitates " we are nought; we must regard ourselves 
" sub specie saeculi " if the spectacle is to be worth the 
trouble. It is hopeless to ask the purpose of humanity 
and its existence — as hopeless as to ask the purpose of 
Sirius, the Milky Way, or the comets. At least we can 
see some sort of subjective purpose in the life of the 
individual: he lives, and wishes to live, because life is 
pleasant to him; he lives, and will live, because life 
gives him pleasure, is pleasure. He has no doubts of 
this; only in sickness and old age — that is to say, when 
the energy of life is waning — is he overcome by a shrink- 
ing feeling of emptiness and aimlessness, of tcedium vita. 
So long as he is filled with life even his reason accepts 
the word of the Gospel: " Sufficient to the day is the 
evil thereof." His happiest hours and his fairest experi- 
ences come to him through a world of illusion of his 
own creation, through religion, fairy-tales and super- 
stitions, through art. In his thirst for permanence, in 
his devouring desire for a future, he longs for a goal 
of aspiration which may open a wide prospect before 
him, he creates for himself an ideal transcending the 
hours of his earthly pilgrimage and the limits of his 
own existence, and in directing himself to it Is comforted 
by a new idea of his own value and his own far-reaching 
significance. But is there one out of all the ideals to 



414 THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

which the noblest and ablest of men have aspired which 
can stand the cold examination of knowledge? Only 
one — the ideal of goodness and of selfless love. To add 
no inevitable touch of cruelty to the inexorable evils with 
which nature scourges man, but, within the limits of their 
strength, to lessen the sum of human suffering — this is 
the ideal towards which the most perfect men our species 
has known have aspired, which they have tried to real- 
ize, which they have felt to be noble and high enough to 
inspire and recompense them. It is an ideal th [3 still 
far from being realized. It may suffice us fc ^ong 
time to come. It can yet make life worth living to 
many, and those the best among us. 

Thus, behind all appearances and all delusions, we 
find the real meaning of history to be the manifestation 
of the life force in mankind. This manifestation passes 
through successive forms — parasitism, illusion, and 
knowledge — in an ascending scale of human adaptation 
to nature. Any other meaning is not deduced from his- 
tory but introduced into it. 



THE END 



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